Vera Pak

Vera Borisovna Pak was born on 13 November 1938 in the Kungrad district of the Karakalpak ASSR. In 1961 she graduated from the Karakalpak State Pedagogical Institute and that same year began teaching at Khiva Secondary School No. 3, named after A. S. Pushkin.

She stayed at the school for many years, and in 1975 she became its organiser of extracurricular and out-of-school educational work. In 1984–1985 she was an inspector for labour training at the Khiva city department of public education.

From 1985 she ran Khiva children’s home No. 20, “Mehribonlik”. Her main aim was to prepare the pupils for independent life: more than 140 children were raised there, and after the ninth grade they went on to vocational colleges and academic lyceums and then to universities. She also paid close attention to the patriotic upbringing of young people.

Pak was active in public life: she was a member of the Women’s Committee of Uzbekistan and of the Republican Council of the People’s Democratic Party, and a deputy of regional and city councils of people’s deputies. In 2005–2010 she sat in the Senate of the Oliy Majlis of Uzbekistan.

In 1992 a presidential decree gave her the title Honoured Worker of Public Education of Uzbekistan, and in 2001 she became a Hero of Uzbekistan for her many years of work raising orphans and children left without parental care.

From 2015 Vera Pak headed the Children’s Town in Khiva, set up for children without parental care. She died on 26 October 2018 at the age of 79; President Shavkat Mirziyoyev expressed his condolences.