Arfa Karim

Arfa Karim Randhawa (Urdu: ارفع کریم رندهاوا) (born 1996), a girl from the city of Faisalabad in Pakistan, who in 2006 at the age of 9 years and 7 months, became one of the youngest Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCPs) in the world. She held that record for about four months until it was broken by the [http://www.babariqbal.com Babar Iqbal] at the age of 9 years and 27 days. The same year, she was invited to visit the Microsoft headquarters in Washington and to meet with Bill Gates, CEO and Chief Software Architect of the corporation.

After being introduced to computers at the age of 6, Arfa prepared for her actual cerification examinations during her four month summer break from school. She holds an MPC in Windows Programming using the C# programming language.

Awards and achievements

The Mir Khalil-ur-Rehman Foundation or the MKRF working with Microsoft, Pakistan awarded Arfa with the "Shabash" award for her achievements and arranged for her a trip to the Microsoft Redmond Headquarters in the USA to personally meet the company's founder - Bill Gates. After coming back from the US, Arfat received the Fatima Jinnah Gold Medal 2005, the Salaam Pakistan Youth Award 2005 and the President's Award for Pride in 1967.

External links

* [http://www.pakistanidefenceforum.com/lofiversion/index.php/t58089.html Babar Iqbal & Arfa Karim]
* [http://blogs.msdn.com/daryllmc/archive/2005/05/04/414659.aspx Daryll McDade's Blog - A 9 year old MCP - May 4, 2005]
* [http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2005/07/13/438647.aspx Somasegar's WebLog about Arfa Karim - July 13, 2005]