Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Nabiha Nasser (1891–1951), a Palestinian nanny born in Birzeit village, Ramallah district, laid the foundation stone of Birzeit University when she and her friend Ratiba Choucair founded a girls' school in Birzeit in 1924.
Educational activity
She received her secondary education at the Evangelical School in Bethlehem and was educated in natural sciences by a British professor while staying in Khartoum to work there.
In 1924, she founded a school for girls in Birzeit to run the school, where she took over the management and teaching of history and Arabic grammar, gardening and shopping, and playing the piano in the school band.
Her school was one of the first Palestinian schools to introduce music into its curriculum, and the first to introduce extracurricular activities such as self-learning and external reading. About the circumstances of that stage, Sama Nasser explained:
"It was frequented by (the school) students from various villages surrounding Ramallah such as Dora al-Qara'a, Jaffna and Ein Sinya, who persevered to attend even on days of extreme cold and their clothes wet and overwhelmed with the trouble and dangers of traveling in order to obtain a distinctive level of education."
This school developed gradually, until in the early fifties it became a university teacher and then in the mid-seventies it became a complete university by all standards.
Political and social activism
She was active in the Palestinian national movement, and also fought for women's rights (like many women from the upper and middle strata of Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century).
In October 1938, she participated in the Eastern Women's Conference, which was held under the chairmanship of the pioneer Mrs. Hoda Shaarawi at the House of the Arab Women's Union Association in Cairo, entitled "Arab Women and the Question of Palestine", where she gave a speech in which she defended Arab unity as a way to confront the threats that plaguePalestine, noted the importance of education, categorically denied any religious differences between the members of the Arab nation, and did not stop at the loss of political freedom by Arab countries to the extent that It prevents the achievement of unity among themselves, even if these countries want to, they have returned to find the solution in economic unity first, saying that the first paved step is to lay "the foundation of public unity by building an economic and cultural unit as soon as possible and without waiting for the maturation of political unity."
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
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