Educational resources for Afghan girls and women

Education for Afghan Girls and Women

I am a teacher from Australia, concerned about the plight of refugees and oppressed people everywhere. I learned a lot about the refugee situation through my work as an English teacher in Australia and Nauru, and permaculture teacher in Bangladesh.

In 2016, I co-founded a community school in a refugee camp near Athens, Greece, where I got to know many refugees, who were mainly Afghan, and a few of these families became lasting friends.

Last year I was approached by one of these friends, asking for help for his sister, an academic in the political sciences, who was in grave danger after the Taliban takeover in August.

I set up a campaign for Shakofa and her family to escape from Afghanistan while also searching for a study visa so she could complete her Ph.D. in a safe country.

Through Scholars at Risk, I found out about a possible scholarship at the University of Turin in Italy. It was a complicated process, but Shakofa was granted a place and a humanitarian visa.

My Gofundme campaign https://gofund.me/141f93e5 helped fund the family’s journey via Pakistan. It was a rough and uncertain time, but Shakofa and her family are now safely settled in Turin, Italy, working at university to achieve her dreams. Her children are going to school and already speaking Italian. Thanks again to everyone who supported this campaign.

Shakofa has experienced first-hand the deprivation of basic rights for women and girls in Afghanistan and is firmly committed to finding ways to reinstate educational opportunities and social freedoms. She campaigns strongly through the University and via her ongoing connections to groups in Kabul and Herat, Afghanistan.

Shakofa wants to extend the support she received in her time of need to other Afghan girls and women in Afghanistan. She has asked me to help raise funds for the project below. A friend and colleague in Kabul, formed the group Rah Danesh in early 2022. They have already made impacts by distributing textbooks in primary schools, and running clandestine online classes for older girls and women.

RAH DANESH - the Way of Knowledge for Afghan women

In Afghanistan, there are many barriers to receiving even a basic high school education in Afghanistan, particularly for girls. These barriers include the need to travel long distances and the lack of funds and primary resources.

The Taliban take-over this past year has been disastrous for girls’ education with the closing of girls’ schools. All women are now being left out of education due to the current restrictions imposed on women and girls.

A group of women's rights activists in Kabul, "Rah Danesh" has formed to advocate for the right to education for girls. Rah Danesh means Way of Knowledge.

These committed educators aim to reopen schools for girls and to support direct links to secondary education for girls in Afghanistan. They have been secretly organizing face-to-face and online courses for female students.

The targets of the program are to:

• Reflect and reinforce the value of girls' education - by supporting and encouraging girls to study

• Help women to learn – by providing alternative ways of learning through online courses and resources, and motivating and mentoring the students

• Provide work to women – by supporting teachers who have lost their jobs under a fundamentalist regime

• Increase women's self-sufficiency – by teaching independence and critical thinking and the politics of change, and paying them a minimum wage where possible

• Hold face-to-face classes for women in distant provinces – through operating places of tuition outside the system, and building networks

The first online classes began on April 6, 2022, starting with a team of 25 volunteer teachers and 100 students in grades 7-12.

As well as online teaching, several support activities were created, including holding a live opening of the informal library at Seyyed al-Nasari School for Girls, to acknowledge and reflect on the value of girls' education.

A second action was to provide an explanatory booklet to the Walswali (secondary-level administrative units) for girls' education in the Kabul district of Bagram.

A third action was to call for the reopening of girls' schools, with the provision of educational supplies and stationery. They began by distributing booklets and pens to several schools.

The ladies of the Rah Danesh team distributing stationery to sixth-grade students of a girls' school in Kabul.

Literacy, numeracy, general knowledge and life skills classes in Herat

Volunteers are doing all these activities unofficially, relying very much on outside financial support.

Supporting this program is a direct way to defend human rights in Afghanistan, particularly the right of women to have an education.

Rah Danesh needs to raise $5000 for the establishment of their first face-to-face course, planned to run from January to March 2023. All funds raised will be sent directly to the Rah Danesh team in Afghanistan via Western Union.

Initial funds will be spent on:

Setting up classrooms in Kabul for teaching literacy and sewing, with equipment such as

Ten sewing machines

Twenty reels of sewing thread

Ten pairs scissors

Ten packs of white fabric

Foam insulation underlay

Carpet for the floor

Sewing tables, desks and chairs for teachers

Two gas heaters and gas cylinders

Blackboard, literacy book, booklets

Rent for the basement for the first month

Sewing school in Kabul

In the long term, the group aims to implement courses in the provinces of Afghanistan that introduce women to the labour market, starting with sewing and dressmaking, and in time to provide a living wage for the teachers.

Please donate to this fund and share the campaign for funding so that we can grow this organisation.

Any small contribution would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Ruth Harvey