Sabina Yasmin Saba
COLUMBIA — Sabina Yasmin Saba died Friday, Dec. 17, 2010, in Columbia. She was 32.
Ms. Saba was born Dec. 15, 1978, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Abdul Khalek Mallik and Halima Begum. She married Jakob Berr in Germany on Aug. 4, 2007.
Ms. Saba was in Columbia visiting Berr and friends.
She spent 15 years of her life working as a theater activist promoting female empowerment and human rights in Bangladesh. Ms. Saba worked for a human rights organization in Bangladesh called Ain o Salish Kendra for several years.
“She has touched uncountable lives with her good spirit and loving energy," Berr said.
Dr. Herb Propper, a certified trainer, educator and practitioner of psychodrama, sociometry and group psychotherapy, worked with Ms. Saba in Bangladesh when he began his efforts to bring psychodrama therapy to the country in 2003. Propper left Ms. Saba in Bangladesh to run workshops while he worked in America and said he had complete confidence in her ability to direct them on her own.
Propper said she excelled at the work she did.
In 2009, Propper acquired a five-month Fulbright grant to work in Bangladesh, and Ms. Saba worked with him during that time. She was everything from an assistant trainer to a translator for Propper.
“She really had a wonderful gift for this therapeutic work,” he said.
Jennie Kristel, a certified Playback Theater practitioner from Burlington, Vt., worked often with Ms. Saba in Bangladesh and other countries.
"Saba believed in the creative theatrical and therapeutic work to bring empowerment for women and children," she said.
Survivors include her husband; her mother, Halima Begum; three sisters, Renu, Milli and Shilpi, all of Bangladesh; a brother, Humayun of Bangladesh; her mother-in-law, Gabriele Berr; a sister-in-law, Antonia Peters and husband Frank; and two brothers-in-law, Hans Berr, wife Katrin Pietschmann-Berr and daughter Lisa, and Sebastian Berr.
Ms. Saba's father, Abdul Khalek Mallik, died earlier in 2009.
Services will be held at 7 p.m. Monday at Memorial Funeral Home, 1217 Business Loop 70 W.
Tributes may be posted online at memorialfuneralhomeandcemetery.com.
