Hakim Illi: Our Host Country Hero

By: Leah Varsano

We faced a terrible challenge creating the Host Country Hero video featuring Hakim Illi, Administrative Assistant in Peace Corps Morocco. This was not because we couldn’t come up  with anything to say – far from it! It was more than easy for the Supporting People with Special Needs committee members who appear in the video to share their reasons why Hakim is their personal hero. We faced challenges because Hakim’s story is so long  

Hakim show casing the inaccessibility of many buildings

and fascinating, and such an important part of the amazing person he is, that we struggled with how to pare it down to only a few snippets of information. If this video intrigued you about Hakim’s life and work, we hope you will enjoy reading about everything that we couldn’t include in such a short clip.

Hakim Illi was born in February, 1961, in Marrakech. His mother was a housewife and his father worked as a security guard in a factory. When Hakim was about 13 months old, he contracted polio. At the beginning his family worked very hard to find a cure; they were not yet ready to believe that they had a son with a disability. His mother became a huge advocate for her son, and she worked tirelessly taking him to doctors and learning about various medicines and treatments. When Hakim was 6 years old, his family finally learned and accepted that his polio would not be treatable, and they began looking for educational opportunities for him.

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