By: Ramina Sotoudeh

Susan notes: This piece is one of several written by young women in grades nine and 12 at the American Academy for Girls in Dubai. The girls were assigned to write and submit a story, profile or attribute to AWR.  Thanks to their English teacher Raheela Shaikh for coordinating the project, and to Ramina Sotoudeh for initiating it.

A science genius by day and a rock star by night, Pardis Sabeti represents the balance we should all have in our lives. She was born in 1975 in Iran but brought up in Florida and now lives in Massachusetts, United States.

Pardis is not only an Iranian woman who is the lead singer and bass player of a band, but she is also an evolutionary geneticist at Harvard University. Pardis developed a method of identifying parts of the genome that are related to natural selection.

I personally admire how Pardis has balanced her hobby (being part of a band) and her career as a geneticist. I believe that every person should attend to his or her hobbies as much as Pardis does.

In 2006, Kim Cameron’s brother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer in his kidneys. The cancer was severe, and the family wasn’t sure if the operation, which would cost him one of his kidneys, would be enough. A thought struck her during his 6-hour surgery: Life is short.

Cameron realized she didn’t want to be in his situation one day, regretting she hadn’t taken a chance and pursued her dream: writing and performing, living and breathing music.

She had always had a passion for music. Living in southern California, Cameron had access to everything in the arts, whether that was a marching band, theatre, choir, or rock & roll.

The weekend of her brother-in-law’s surgery, she began to turn her dream into reality, and, at the age of 40, wrote her first song.

Songwriting became a positive outlet for expressing how much her brother-in-law and his battle with cancer had made an impact on her life.

Susan notes: please go to the CNN heroes page here and vote for your favourite hero for 2010 - the voting is open until November 18, 2010, and you may vote as many times as you like. Even better, cast your vote(s) for Anuradha Koirala, who rescues Nepalese girls from brothels. She is amazing and her story is amazing too....
 
Geeta was 9 when she began wearing makeup, staying up until 2 a.m. and having sex with as many as 60 men a day.

"I used to be really sad and frustrated with what was happening in my life," she said.

The daughter of Nepalese peasant farmers, Geeta -- now 26 -- had been sold to a brothel in India by a member of her extended family. The family member had duped Geeta's visually impaired mother into believing her daughter would get work at a clothing company in Nepal.

"The brothel where I was ... there [were] many customers coming in every day. The owner used to verbally abuse us, and if we didn't comply, [she] would start beating us with wires, rods and hot spoons."

Susan notes: Daughters of Cambodia is a non-profit social entrepreunerial initiative that recognizes the impact of sexual exploitation as an abuse of human rights with detrimental effects on the psychological and physical wellbeing of girls and young women who make a living as sex workers in Cambodia.  It seeks to help victims find ways out of this situation and into a situation of safety, freedom and dignity, to find wholeness, and to become all that God created them to be. This video tells the story of the organisation and some of the girls it helps.