Arfa Karim Randhawa young IT child prodigy | Pakistan's youngest Microsoft Certified Professional

No doubt Pakistan is full of talent, all a child needs is a little caring like a plant needs nourishments to advance and evolve.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Arfa Karim Randhawa is young IT prodigy from Pakistan who in 2004 at the age of 9 became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional from Pakistan. Sharing her story on ARCast she said:

Actually when I was six years old, I saw my first computer; whenever you see something new you want to find What is it ? How does is it work ? so I ask my dad to get me a PC. He bought me one, so I used to mess around and I got to know quite a lot of things about it from the hit and trial method and in about two years I got to know how to operate windows and different softwares completely. After that, I used to make a lot of presentations for my father and my mother. My father and my mother used to watch me and say "she got some talents in computers" so then they took me to an institute near by our house and there I started to learn C sharp and then I appeared for exam of MCP.

Arfa Karim was born in 1995, in Faislabad, Pakistan.She in 2004 at the age of 9 years, became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCPs) in the world. She was invited by Bill Gates to visit the Microsoft Headquarters in USA. The vice president of the Software Development Division Mr. S. Somasegar wrote about it in his blog.

I got a chance to meet with this wonder kid – Arfa Karim Randhawa earlier this week. She is a 5th grader who visited us at Microsoft for a few days along with her father. I had a lot of fun in meeting Arfa and getting a chance to understand what motivated her to strive for such an accomplishment at such a young age. She definitely has some clear ideas about the kinds of scenarios she envisions technology can enable in the future.
My hats off to Arfa’s parents for nurturing her passion and talent and providing her with opportunities to learn and excel. I wish Arfa all the very best in her life and hope that her passion for learning and more importantly “dreaming big” enables her to do great things in her life.

Sitting down for a personal meeting with Bill Gates this week, 10-year-old Arfa Karim Randhawa asked the Microsoft founder why the company doesn't hire people her age.

She also do poetry as a hobby there is a list of poems she wrote few years back.

In August 2005, Arfa Karim received the Fatimah Jinnah Gold Medal in the field of Science and Technology, presented by the Prime Minister of Pakistan at that time. She also received the Salaam Pakistan Youth Award again in August 2005 by the President of Pakistan Pervaiz Musharaf. Arfa Karim is also the recipient of the President's Award for Pride of Performance. This is a very high level civil award granted to people who have shown excellence in their respective fields over a long period of time. Arfa is till now the youngest recipient of that award ever.

In 2006, Arfa was invited by Microsoft to be a part of the keynote session in the Tech-Ed Developers conference held in Barcelona. The theme of the conference was "Get ahead of the game" and Arfa was presented as a true specimen of being ahead of the game. She was the only Pakistani among over 5000 developers in that conference.

In 2011, at the age of 16, Arfa Karim suffered from heart attack and admitted to hospital in a critical condition and she died on 14th of January,2012 after being in a coma for a one month approximately.