- We’re gonna get started with this Young Alumni Achievement Award with Shabana Basij-Rasikh Class of 2011. And I just wanna say welcome, Shabana. It’s great to see you, great to be able to honor you today. And I also wanna welcome Janine Hetherington Class of ‘95, and parent to James who’s Class of 2024. Janine is the President of the Middlebury Alumni Association Board. And she will be interviewing Shabana and then we’ll go into a Q&A. And so please, if you look down on your Zoom controls, use the Q&A feature and submit questions at any time. We’ve had chat going for a little bit. We’re gonna turn that off to just sort of minimize the distractions and just really rely on the Q&A which you’ll see in your Zoom control. You’ll also notice that live transcript close captioning is turned on. You can control that on your end whether you want to see the subtitles or not. So please do as you please there. And I want to point out that we do have another Reunion Week event today. It’s tonight at 7:30 eastern time. And it’s our Moth Story Hour moderated by a true Moth pro, Casey Donahue Class of 2010.5, and she will be working with six incredible alumni who’ve joined to tell their stories. So that’s at 7:30 tonight. I just wanna make that plug. So I think I’m ready to turn it over. Oh, I should say I’m Meg Storey Groves, AVP for Alumni and Parent Programs at Middlebury, Class of ‘85. Sorry, I should have said that in the beginning. Anyways, I’m gonna now turn it over to Janine, and she’s gonna start with reading the citation for Shabana for the Young Alumni Achievement Award. Thank you.
- Thank you very much, Meg. Shabana, assalamu alaikum. It is an honor and a true pleasure to present this award to you. So I’m gonna start. The 2021 Young Alumni Achievement Award for Shabana Basij-Rasikh Class of 2011. In 2008, while still a teenager and student at Middlebury, Shabana Basij-Rasikh founded a school for girls in her hometown of Kabul, Afghanistan. Today the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, or SOLA meaning peace in Pashto, is an Afghan-led private boarding school for girls, the first of its kind in Afghanistan. SOLA’s mission is to provide Afghan girls with a rigorous education that promotes critical thinking, a sense of purpose, and respect for self and others. Shabana’s determination to create opportunities for girls grew out of her own experience as a child. In 1996 the Taliban banned girls’ education and any movement by girls without a chaperone, and soon secret schools for girls began to open. Shabana, dressed as a boy, and her sister risked their lives daily as they walked Kabul streets to one of these schools. Shabana has never forgotten what her father told her during those years, “You can lose everything you own in your life,” he said, “but the one thing that will always remain with you is what’s in your head. Your education is the biggest investment of your life.” Today as president of SOLA, Shabana is creating paths for others to invest in their own education. SOLA enrolls nearly 100 students in pre through sixth grade middle school and high school programs. And ultimately the school aims to empower students to return to their communities, to break down the barriers to women’s visibility and to lead Afghanistan into a prosperous and peaceful future. “The most effective antidote to extremism is to create the best educated generation in Afghanistan’s history,” Shabana says. “Our girls today, who are the women of tomorrow, will make that happen.” Shabana knows the need is great, in Afghanistan 66 percent of girls ages 12 to 15 are out of school. 63 percent of adolescent girls are illiterate, and there are not enough women teachers, and girls are at risk of violent assault as they walk to school every day. Since Middlebury, Shabana has received a Masters in Public Policy from Oxford University, and Honorary Degrees from SOAS University of London and Cedar Crest College in Pennsylvania. She was named one of CNN International’s Leading Women of 2014, and a National Geographic 2014 Emerging Explorer. Shabana is a global ambassador for Girl Rising, a call to action seeking investment in girls’ education worldwide. In 2018, she received the Malalai Medal, one of Afghanistan’s highest national honors, and in 2019, she was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the social entrepreneurship sector. The Middlebury Alumni Association Alumni Achievement Award is presented to Shabana Basij-Rasikh in recognition of her personal achievements and the outstanding contribution she has made to her country. Her distinguished accomplishments bring great credit to the college, we are so proud. Congratulations Shabana.
- Thank you so much, Janine, thank you.
- You are welcome. And I have one more message. President Patton couldn’t be with us today although she very much wanted to be, so she asked me to read a greeting to you as well. She says, “Shabana I send you my very best wishes and congratulations on being selected for the Alumni Achievement Award. It is a joy to see you recognized. I’m grateful for your ongoing commitment to Middlebury in the midst of all you are accomplishing in Afghanistan, and particularly for the opportunity you created for our bold scholars to mentor and learn from your students. Alumni may not be aware, but Middlebury is a host institution of the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network, which seeks to address challenging social issues by building women’s leadership on college campuses. Shabana through SOLA, you too are creating change one young woman at a time. Thank you for your vision, your dedication and your courage.” That’s from Laurie.
- That’s very, very kind. Please do pass my sincere gratitude to her for her kind words as well.
- Absolutely. So I’m so happy to be here with you today. We go back a long time. I first met you when you were still in high school, and I remember being struck back then by your poise and grace, and your conviction and confidence, and I also remember thinking, “This girl is going to change the world.” So I wanted to thank you for proving me right, because at a very young age you started doing that early and you continue to do that now.
- Thank you.
- I have a bunch of questions that I’d like to ask you so we can get to know you and get to know your work, and once we get through some of those then we will open it up to audience Q&A. So sound good?
- Great, sounds great.
- Are you ready?
- But before you start, I do wanna thank you. I do remember your words of wisdom but also your encouragement even when I was in high school. I hope you understand that people like you, and especially you Janine, have had a great impact on shaping me and who I’ve become. So thank you for that. And knowing that it always came from you, I think I’ve picked up a love for reading because you always surrounded yourself with books and always talked about how much you loved reading books. So thank you for that.
- You are very welcome. Okay, so today is June 10th, 2021. We’re all gathered here virtually for a 10 year reunion, we wish we could be on campus, but happy to be celebrating in the Zoom room. With that in mind Shabana, can you take me back 10 years and tell us what you were doing on June 10th of 2011?
- I think I was sleeping or rather catching up on sleep. I had such an incredible four years at Middlebury, and especially my senior year was incredibly intense with both my studies, writing theses, and helping my siblings get into high school and college in the US. And just generally, my co-founder and I were thinking about the trajectory of SOLA at that time as focus was slowly shifting away from Afghanistan to Iraq at that time more and more, and what that meant for SOLA as an organization. And I was actively raising funds to build a school in my father’s village in Eastern Afghanistan. So there was a lot going on leading up to June, 2011, and I think it took me a good month to recover. It was graduation where I really needed to rest. So I think that’s most likely what I was doing. It wasn’t something grand, it was simply catching up on sleep.
- It certainly sounds like you’re from a lot of grand things and grand plans. So you created SOLA when you were a freshmen at Middlebury, can you take us through how that happened, and then maybe more importantly, why it happened?
- Absolutely. Janine, you know, you and I have been in touch and you have most likely heard me talk about that really key role Middlebury and my involvement as a member of the communities played in the shaping of SOLA and even the creation of SOLA. And I think it’s a couple of things, and for me, being at Middlebury as a freshman was kind of the last straw that led to the creation of SOLA. But two events in my life that I… actually three, third one being a freshmen at Middlebury, the two prior to that was March, 2002, when I found myself attending a public school in Kabul for the first time ever. And this was immediately after 9/11 girls were able to go back to school, not start school for the first time, but go back to school. And because the Taliban had burned records for female students, it meant the only choice girls had were to take a placement test. And a lot of girls poured into the closest public school near them and took a placement test into whatever grade they felt comfortable placing into. When the class assignments were done and all the clusters were put together, and they decided to assign students who had scored the highest in these exams, especially in science and math, to become class representatives, and I was chosen as one. So they were making these announcements in front of all the students to introduce the class representatives. And it was key in the beginning, because the schools were still trying to recruit teachers, especially female teachers, so there were several hours in our day when we wouldn’t have a teacher show up and so we had to really figure it out, and often the responsibility was on the class representative to lead a class session. And when my teacher called my name and I went to the front of the line, I for the first time recognized what my parents had done for me under the Taliban regime, which was the risk they took to educate me and my sisters. During most of that time I thought my parents were unkind, I thought they were cruel, and how could they risk our lives just for an education. But that day when I stood there, I saw how the majority of my classmates were at least six years older than I was. And it was quite easy to see that difference. And that is when I realized how lucky I was, how fortunate I was, and what the risk that my parents took meant for me as a young Afghan girl. I felt very lucky, but I also felt so ashamed that I didn’t see the value sooner. And so that day I made a promise to myself that I was going to use my education to live a life of purpose, just the way my parents always preached to us. In all honesty, I never understood anything other than a life of purpose of being associated with education until I left Afghanistan and learned about the different reasons why people receive a certain kind of education and et cetera. But for me, it was always, you know, you receive an education in order to serve people who haven’t had the same access. Then my second kind of really pivotal moment in my life was when I was 15, and I came to the United States as a high school exchange student. And for the first time I found myself living in a society where girls didn’t have this looming threat over their heads that they were going to lose their access to education. And that was so beautiful. The way I experienced it, I kept on wanting to figure out at what point will these American girls that I came to know, share with me their fears that one day they will not be able to go to school, and that never happened. And so I found that so beautiful. I found it beautiful that girls could take their education for granted. And even at that young age, I knew that when Afghanistan gets to a place where girls don’t have this looming threat over their heads that they could lose their access to education, then we have made the kind of progress that can never be undone. And I wanted that progress for Afghanistan. So when I came to Middlebury, and my freshman year at that time, President Liebowitz during orientation, said something along the lines of how we were some of the luckiest people in the world to be at Middlebury, to be spending our next four years there, and how less than 2 or 3% of Americans have access to this level of education. And as I was sitting in the audience, I was starting to look around and see if other people were listening to this for the first time as I was. And everyone was quite normal. But for me it was like, “Oh my God, where am I? Where have I ended up? What is this place?” you know. I didn’t apply to Middlebury because of what Middlebury was, I applied to Middlebury at that time because my co-founder before we started SOLA together, he encouraged me very strongly that I apply to Middlebury, that it would be a perfect place for me, and that he knew me and he knew a place like Middlebury, and it would be a great place for me. So when I came to realize that, as you can imagine, I really couldn’t do the math for myself coming from Afghanistan. The UN published a report the same year that said only 6% of women in Afghanistan have a college degree. So I spent most of my freshman year of college feeling incredibly overwhelmed by how lucky I was to be there. I felt so privileged. I felt so lucky, but I also felt so guilty. And, you know, I had my advisors and professors, who I was very fortunate to be able to call by first name, who would say, you know, “Don’t think about this Shee, you know, you’re great and you deserve to be here.” But for me I couldn’t escape the questions, “What next? What do I do with this?” You know, “What if I fail? I’m not just gonna be failing me, I’m gonna be failing on behalf of Afghan women and Afghan girls, or any other person who didn’t get this chance that I did.” So I was constantly wrestling with that. And by the end of my freshman year, it felt really appropriate, and in a way I felt very happy to be doing something that, you know, I open access for other young girls to have the same kinds of opportunities like I did, and that felt great. And so the idea in the beginning behind SOLA, was to be a scholarship program and to bring young Afghan students to the US to at least study two, three years of high school before they go on to college and university and then go back to Afghanistan. But then we later evolved as an organization, which I’m happy to talk about, but that was really the beginning of why SOLA and why it was so important at that critical time.
- That’s so interesting that you first talk about your sense of purpose and understanding it at a very, very early age, but then naming being overwhelmed and a sense of guilt for having so much privilege as a motivator to give back and to do better and do more. And there’s an enormous weight of that to take on as a young person. So you did create SOLA while you were a freshmen, so we wanna know, tell us everything about SOLA. What do you do there? Who are your students? How has your mission evolved? Help us get to know the school and your community.
- Absolutely. I will quickly tell you about SOLA but I wanna focus a lot more on our students because the girls at SOLA, you know, without a shadow of doubt, they’re some of the bravest, funniest, smartest people, not just girls, I’ve ever met. And you will soon know and believe why. So, when we started SOLA, like I said, it was a scholarship program, but we transitioned it to a boarding school for several reasons. One, instead of sending young Afghans outside of Afghanistan to access quality education, we wanted to bring a quality education to Afghans in Afghanistan. And it felt very important that it was critical that young Afghans had access to quality education in their own home country. And that it was important that they spend their formative years in Afghanistan, which would mean that they would be more likely to return to Afghanistan and see a future and be part of a future in Afghanistan. So in the process of evolving SOLA from a scholarship program to a boarding school, which took us a few years, because it was very important to get it right, we realized that we were establishing the very first, and unfortunately still the only all-girls boarding school in the country. It took us a few years for several reasons, but one of the most important one was realizing that when initially we wanted to be a high school 9th-12th grade, girls coming to us from rural parts of Afghanistan, at ninth grade it was already too late. They were performing academically at an elementary school level. And we really couldn’t really say that we are a school open to students from all over the country and know how incredibly challenging it is going to be for ninth graders from provinces to study at SOLA. And honestly, in a way it reminded me of my own struggles. When I first came to Middlebury, I spent my first two months, this may surprise you, but I spent my first two months trying to encourage my advisor to help me take two years off from Middlebury so that I could go to a private school. Because I would look around and pretty much a lot of the international students that I met, with some exception, they went to this thing called UWC that I didn’t know about before. And a lot of the American students that I met they went to some sort of a private school, so I somehow convinced myself that I needed to get me that experience in order to do well at Middlebury. And, you know, fortunately with a lot of support, a small community, and being able to really connect with my professors easily, I had a great four years, but in the beginning I was incredibly overwhelmed, and I felt like I’d lacked a lot of academic foundation coming from a place like Afghanistan on top of it feeling so betrayed by the Afghan education system, because that system recognized me as the top and the best student in the country, and here I came to the US and I didn’t feel fully prepared. So I could relate to the to the pain in a way of students coming from provinces at ninth grade and not doing well. So we went through a strategic planning process at a board level and came to the decision that we wanted to start the SOLA experience at sixth grade level. This is a time when girls are roughly 10 to 12 years old, and in Afghanistan girls at this age are still seen as girls and not women. So it’s easier to convince their families to let them board. Academically, it allowed us time to address the student’s academic gaps before they reach high school, so that then we could pursue a world-class curriculum. And then, as you know it’s developmentally an exciting time to work with young girls, and especially young girls coming of age and at a time when they are told to lower their voice and hide and cover, and, you know, we engage in programs where they celebrate themselves and their bodies, and they’re participating in mandatory exercise hour, every day they do yoga, et cetera. And so we finally were able to admit our very first cohort in 2016, and those girls, the very first cohort, they’re currently finishing their first semester of 11th grade. And next year they will be our very first class that will graduate SOLA High School. So since then we have admitted a new cohort at SOLA. therefore we’ve gradually moved up. We have nearly 100 students representing 28 of the 34 provinces, which is huge, it is significant.
- That’s amazing. So that is about SOLA and SOLA’s evolution, but the girls and their families, they are truly remarkable. I have families who accept at the very least, some sort of negative commentary from neighbors or relatives or their villagers, for making the decision allowing their daughters to attend SOLA, fathers who stand up to that kind of comments. And in some severe cases, we’ve had fathers of our students who have nearly missed being killed by a bomb blast because they have allowed their daughter to go to Kabul to study. The girls themselves, they’re remarkable, they’re incredibly brave. I mean, even to this day as they move between Kabul and provinces, they pass through incredibly insecure areas, they pass through front lines of war between the Afghan security forces, and in some cases, the US security forces and the Taliban. And, you know, in other cases these girls make these trips on their own to come to SOLA. While most of their families are incredibly supportive especially fathers and brothers, we have students who go on hunger strikes to be allowed to come to SOLA, and this is stories that we hear later on about how do they get to SOLA, how do they hear about us, or how did they convince their families to let them come to SOLA? And I occasionally hear these stories of girls saying, “You know, once I was admitted, my father said, ‘No, you can’t go to Kabul to study.’ So I went on a hunger strike until he said, ‘Fine, you can go.’” And these are young girls, I’m talking about 10, 11, 12-year-olds who make these decisions. These girls… Oh, I think I need to stop because I can go on and on and tell you more and more stories. But please, if you have time at the end, ask me more, I will happily tell you more stories about what they do between their short breaks and long breaks in their communities. There are some remarkable stories there as well.
- So I’d love you to tell us that SOLA story. Can you share a story from campus that might surprise us? Although I think a lot of this might surprise us here in the audience, so.
- Oh yes. Well, actually one of the things I failed to mention which I should have at the very beginning, one thing that I have borrowed from Middlebury is the language pledge. So when our sixth graders join us, we give them a few weeks to get over homesickness and, you know, they’re from all over the country. You know, they have no prior examples in their families of anyone attending a boarding school. So it’s very new as an experience for them and their families. And so we give them a few weeks and then they sign a language pledge to speak English at all times in the residential campus. And what that does is it really… One, the girls come from different parts of Afghanistan so most often they don’t even have a common language, so it gives them a common language, it gives them a common challenge that is to learn to speak English. But it also accelerates their ability to access more quality education beyond what is available in Afghanistan. So by the end of their first year with us, so starting seventh grade, you know, they can pick up more, and by eighth grade they’re connected to e-tutors, these are virtual tutors that connect with our students and then starting in ninth grade they take a good portion of their classes which we license from US education companies here for algebra, for biology, for history, et cetera, and they do really well. But it also allows them to connect with classrooms across the US and across the world. And they engage in really meaningful discussions with students in the US and other countries, either on a more regular basis or on a one off conversations that they hold. And they do really remarkably well in this.
- Thank you. Okay, next question. The statistics on women’s achievements and progress in Afghanistan can seem pretty contradictory. For example, women hold 27% percent of the seats in Afghanistan’s parliament, which is the same percentage of seats held by women in the United States Congress, and yet we also see statistics that say three million girls are out of school, and that more than 60% of Afghan teenage girls are illiterate. So it seems like two very different stories. How do you make sense of those two narratives? What one might consider as progress at the national level and then the educational gap?
- Yeah, actually, that’s a great question. And something I get asked a lot about how do you make sense of this progress of Afghan woman that you want us to believe but there’s so much that still needs to be done. I think my quickest explanation is it’s very, very simple. When you create that space you just watch what women can and girls can do with the opportunities given to them, or in a way when you remove the hurdles that is placed in there. So when we initially had the chorus put in place for women to be able to take these representative seats in our parliament, in the very beginning, you had more and more people reminding us that we didn’t have qualified women filling up these positions. And now your female representatives in the Afghan parliament are some of the most active and outspoken representatives we have. And they’re not just speaking on behalf of girls and women but they are chairing the Security Committee, National Security Committee. They’re talking about economic opportunities for people, they’re talking about a meaningful and long lasting peace process. And not just one that is a political settlement for a short-term. And so that is one. And in a way similar to SOLA. At SOLA, I can’t take credit for the amazing girls that come to us. The only thing I take credit for is the space that we create for these girls to flourish into themselves. And they are remarkable, they’re brave. Some of them have quiet determination but it’s there, and it all speaks to once we are able to either create space or remove hurdles to allow women to create space for themselves and others, remarkable things happen. And that’s really the quickest and easiest explanation. The other one, which I hope will inspire you and everyone listening here is, it speaks to the resilience and the grit and determination of Afghan woman. And it’s not something to romanticize. It’s not something of the recent 20 or 40 years. It has been there historically. I always remind people, especially these days, that when I, you asked me what I was doing 10 years ago today, 20 years ago today, I was dressing up as a boy secretly entering someone’s house to study. And that brave woman, she decided to bring risk to her family and educate us. That education had a real cost to her and to her family, but she did it because she genuinely and strongly believe that educating girls was the right thing to do. And that tradition has carried forward. Even to this day. You have, you will not hear about the amazing woman the unsung heroes of Afghanistan, who and these are one particular woman that comes to mind who can be an example of thousands of other woman. Who’s a lawyer defending women’s cases who switches her phone number on weekly basis, but switches her home moves, from her home to another home every few months to avoid being killed. And yet she does not stop doing what she does. And so it’s simple. In the west, the misconception is that women and girls in Afghanistan don’t go to school because of traditional beliefs and religious beliefs. And they’re all there. You have people who believe that or who are misinformed about religion but the number one reason why girls don’t go to school is logistical in nature. It’s shortage of teacher and teachers but especially shortage of female teachers and lack of water and sanitation facilities in more than 60% of schools across our Afghanistan. So it’s important to keep that in mind, because once we simplify it to, yes, it is a logistical issue then we can actually engage and take action to try to solve it.
- So so you name the fact that you’re creating space, but I also think you take credit for. You’re also creating these role models. And for these, I know it, I think it’s very important for girls and other modular marginalized populations. If you can, you can be it. There’s something important about that. And so I imagine what these women who serve as representatives with the women who serve at SOLA as principal and teachers, and you as the leader that’s got to be inspiring as as role models for these really young girls.
- Hugely, I actually, we make an very strong effort to invite in young Afghan woman in government, in private sector but just prominent Afghan woman to come in. Artists were the first graffiti, first female graffiti artist has come into SOLA and spoken with our girls. Deputy Ministers of Education, who’ve come in to campus. And they have actually been connected to the students on a very human level. Talking about their own challenges of and opportunities that they have had and how they have dealt with them and connecting with our students. And it does that powerful thing of role modeling and also helping our students to recognize that they’re not alone. And that they’re part of a network of educated Afghan, soon to be, you know educated Afghan woman who fight for all of Afghanistan not just for girls and women. And it is hugely inspiring for our girls. They all come to us at the beginning of the sixth grade telling me that they wanna become a doctor. Even though when I press them that I know that’s what your parents want you to be but what do you want to be? They’re like I want to be what my parents want to want me to be. And then they often, after their first year with us you asked the same question and then we have the astronauts and the shoe designer and the parliamentarian and the photographer. And we have many, many of young girls who wanna be female presidents of Afghanistan. So yes, their dreams and aspirations also evolve. And yes, it is thanks to the role modeling and also the people who come in and speak with them. Afghan women, who they see and follow.
- Right, thank you. Okay, so you left for Middlebury and returned to Afghanistan in 2011 as a young, highly educated woman. And since then, you’ve earned master’s degree from Oxford, multiple honorary doctorates, and you are known around the world as an educator and an outspoken advocate for girl’s education and a social entrepreneur. How so, one in two things. How do Afghan men in general respond to a woman like you and how do Afghan women respond to a woman like yourself?
- Yeah, you know, I would only, I think it’s very fair that I speak very truthfully about my experience and it is my experience only. So it can be seen as my experience and there is a lot that could contribute to it. But it may come across as surprising that it’s a very favorably, you know. If there are any kind of a negative response maybe it’s the environment that I create or whatever it is. I don’t see it. But I have traveled across Afghanistan and I sit down in circles of religious men. I sit down with educated men with a lot of different groups of men, and they’re very respectful towards towards me and what I do and the unrecognized the fact that I could have stayed in the United States and turn my back on Afghanistan and lived a comfortable life but I’ve chosen to come back to Afghanistan. And a lot of them joined forces me, actually. I have several mullahs. These are religious Afghanistan men. When I go to provinces they accompany me from school to school, some of whose daughters are at SOLA studying and they advocate very, very openly about their daughters studying a SOLA and how great of an environment SOLA is and how important it is. So I also think that the fact that I am working in education, that probably helps. So that’s why I’m saying it’s a very personal experience. I can’t imagine let’s say what people’s experience would have been or how I would have been received by people in Afghanistan in general if I had a different profession. So that I have to keep in mind. And I want everyone listening to this keep in mind that it’s a very personal experience. And I also am personally very careful to make sure that I am well-received in Afghanistan so that it opens up opportunities for young girls. I always make an active effort on that because for me the most important thing is to be able to get open access for girls from the most conservative communities which is not easy for them to then get access to education. And in order for me to do that, I need to be, I need to come across as an Afghan educated woman, that opens doors, not closes doors. And so even my work of negotiating let’s say patriarchy is very much a negotiation from within not from outside. I don’t push back in a way that shuts conversations. I listen, and I try to respect and honor perspectives from the other side, which I may strongly disagree with but I don’t fixate on that. Instead, I try to listen and understand what is the issue and then work with it to. I guess to put it in a more of an example might be helpful. A few years ago, we admitted a student who was in eighth grade in a province but we told her that she needed to repeat sixth grade. We don’t admit students in any grade, but sixth grade. And in provinces, like I said because the quality of education is so terrible. It’s often, I mean, they wouldn’t be wasting time. They actually would be learning things they would be still challenged even if they repeat two grades. So at this particular student has a sister already studying at SOLA. So the family is familiar with us. But her uncle decided that she should not come to SOLA. And so the older sister came to me. She was initially happy that her sister had been admitted to SOLA, but then was crying that her uncle wouldn’t let the sister come in. These two sisters happened to be orphans. So the uncle is their legal guardian. And I said, “Let me speak with your uncle. I’ll talk to him.” And she said, “No, my uncle’s no is no. He’s never changed his mind once he says no.” And so she was just hopeless. I said, “No, let me, just give me his phone, let me call him.” So I called him. I introduced myself and he immediately knew who I was and he was very kind, you know, he started thanking me for you know, having the oldest of the two sisters on at SOLA. And I said, “No, the issues is actually, I want the younger sister to come but I hear you don’t agree.” He said, “Well, you know, I heard that you want her to repeat two grades and by the time she finishes high school she would be too old to get married.” And this is, he’s talking about by the time she finishes high school. And when I calculate in my head she would be 20 years old by the time she finishes high school. And so I mean, I see that that could be a challenging thing for any parent to accept, particularly in Afghanistan. And then he said something that was so interesting for me. He said, and besides if, he said “It’s my moral obligation to make sure she gets married on time, especially now that my brother’s not alive. And besides if I make sure that she gets married on time, God will grant me a garden in heaven.” And something that really was interesting. I had never heard that, but even the concept of doing something religiously, upright and appropriate then God gives you gardens in heaven. And so I said to him, I said, “Do you think that because of the work I do God has created gardens in heaven for me?” And he said, “Oh, absolutely, there is no doubt.” And then he launched another thing about how great I am and that the work I do, and God will bless me. And I have many gardens. And I said, “If you really believe that,” and I said, “you know, that God is above us, I promise you my garden in heaven if you let her come to SOLA.” And he laughed and then he listened. He was like, “Okay.” And I said, “Look, I’m not joking, I’m serious.” I said, “I really mean it. And if we meet one day after this life, you can have my garden, but let her come to SOLA.” And I said, “Besides don’t you think that your brother will be more proud when his daughter can have a job in the future? Let’s say, because she learns English at SOLA, she can even get a job as she graduates high school?” And I said, ” In this economy, a lot of men don’t have jobs. And when she gets married and she’s able to get a job and when her husband is not employed and then she’s able to provide for her family, don’t you think that your brother would be happy with the decision you made?” He said, “Okay, fine, let me think.” He said, “Let me think to myself and I’ll be in touch.” Two days later, the older sister walked into my office and she gave me the biggest hug. And she was jumping up and down and she said, “My uncle agreed.” And that sister is in our graduating class. And so next year she will graduate high school as a 20-year-old.
- Amazing and an amazing intersection of reason and religious belief, that’s lovely coming together. That’s quite impressive. Well, all right, well, so let’s see, where are we gonna go from here? So we know, many of us here in the United States see the headlines from Afghanistan and they are challenging. And if someone asked us to describe your country using three words, those three words might not be so helpful. But let’s rewrite the script. So can you give me three words that describe the country that you know?
- Yeah, I think three words that more specifically that would describe Afghans who’ve been living in Afghanistan for all these years, which I genuinely believe. And I say this without any kind of romanticizing people in Afghanistan because we have gone through a lot of suffering, I would say, resilient. If you want to know and understand what resilience means comes to Afghanistan and meet people. On May 8th, an all girls public school was bombed 100 girls died more than a 100 and some got injured. The next day, one of the girls injured from the hospital bed said, “I will go to school as soon as I’m out of here. Even if I’m attacked again. No one will stop me from gaining knowledge.” So I don’t romanticize it, I mean, it. If you wanna know people who are resilient come meet people in Afghanistan. Second thing I would say is, people who are thirsty for peace. There are people who lose their family members in war. They’re not out seeking revenge. They say, I don’t even wish this on my enemy. Let’s just bring peace, let’s work towards peace. This call for peace is coming from all across Afghanistan. Hungry for knowledge and I already gave you examples. My God, the way people in Afghanistan understand and value education. I don’t think anyone else around the world does. It is unbelievable, I mean, I lived with it. During the most difficult time in my childhood. When my parents had to choose between feeding me a meal or paying my school fee, they chose very easily to pay my school fee. And we understood and honored that. And it’s not one, it’s a very, very personal example but it’s not the only example. You will see this happening in all of Afghanistan people understanding the value of education.
- Thank you, all right. One last question and then we will open it up to audience Q&A. So if anybody has a question to ask please use the Q&A button down at the bottom of your screen and type in your question. So we started this by looking back 10 years in time and I’d like to finish up by jumping forward 10 years in time and imagining we are hanging out on June 10th, 2031. And it’s your 20th reunion at Middlebury. So tell me, what’s been happening over those past, those 10 years for you, for SOLA and for Afghanistan.
- So this is extremely exciting. And I’ll try to do this in a way without getting emotional, because it’s—
- It’s okay to get emotional.
- It’s something I think about every single day. And in the most difficult times, it’s thinking about this that gets me through the most difficult and harsh of circumstances. In 10 years, first of all, I know that we will have a robust campus, a safe, secure campus in Kabul. A piece of Kabul that will be permanently of SOLA and girls. It will be a home for girls from all over Afghanistan especially from the most remote parts of Afghanistan. Our graduates, who are already leaders in their communities and in how they, what they do when they go home whether they tutor girls, whether they volunteer to teach or educate a woman in their community, about women’s health and hygiene and whatever they do. I know that they will be national level leaders. There is no doubt that you will be seeing and hearing about SOLA alums and graduates and their influence whether it’s in the public sector or private sector. And they will be highly respected and recognized. I hope that there will be similar schools like SOLA all across Afghanistan, and that SOLA would not be the only unique boarding school for girls in Kabul. It’s time for us to have a community and network of schools like SOLA, so there shouldn’t be anything really unique or special about SOLA. And I think about the financial health of SOLA a lot. I hope that in 10 years we will be in a place where I won’t have to raise funds every year to sustain SOLA’s operations. So I’m looking at setting up or rather building our endowment to a point where SOLA will be a forever institution in the true sense, and continuing to keep bringing girls from the most remote parts of Afghanistan as it’s true focus. That I want that to be a forever focus for SOLA. And beyond that, I do I’m really itching to do more and get more involved. I wanna open women’s access to the gig economy. There is no reason why women from Afghanistan from the comfort of their homes can work for some of the international corporations and bring income to their families and supporting their families and their communities. And making sure that the next wave of illiteracy in Afghanistan is not that of a digital illiteracy. So I know that I will be probably even more focused on that moving forward.
- Those are big plans. I can’t wait to see you and tell, well, I’ll see you before then but I’m looking forward to hearing how it’s going and in 10 years.
- Wouldn’t that be fun? That would be great. Most definitely, I’m hoping it would be in person and not another pandemic—
- Absolutely, we’ll have a better end.
- Yeah.
- So audience, do we have any questions? I do have, I have a comment from friend of mine in . And he’s thanking you for all that you do saying it is inspiring and such important work. If anybody else has a question for Shabana, please put it in the Q&A and we can get to that. I always have more questions for you. I’m really interested to hear how you think about fear and what tools you use and what tools your girls use in the face of true violent threat to their families and their own bodies. Like what do you use to navigate that in your work and your day-to-day life? Especially as you are, you know, given your public role and you’re such an outspoken advocate for girl’s education. How do you face that? How do you think about it?
- Oh yeah. I think the shortest way I can answer this and I think maybe you and I can talk about this more in person, but the shortest way I can answer this is that, in face of your, the best thing anyone can do is to focus on things that you can control. And then and make sure that you do that very, very well. I wish I could speak more about some of the examples from SOLA, but again, for security reasons and making sure if I don’t wanna give out too much of a detail on our security detail, but I think that is, you know focusing on things that you can control. So let’s say we are on campus and there’s a bomb blast nearby, the girls focus on their studies. And they have learned to really gracefully do that. It’s so beautiful to watch. It is so heartbreaking to watch. It makes me so angry that when there’s a nearby attack and SOLA building shakes and we don’t know who the target is. And yet the thing that girls focused on is praying to get some calm and comfort but also opening their books and doing their homework. And it’s I have to say, it’s an incredible thing to witness in that moment of fear. It’s amazing how that can get you through even the most life-threatening situation that you must feel. But I guess as a word of advice, focusing on things that you can control is the best way to navigate through here. Any kind of fear in life.
- Yeah, thank you. Okay, we have a couple questions. So we have, this is, I am a fundraiser and have been for decades. I love this kind of question from an anonymous attendee. Are financial donations the best way to help at this point help SOLA at this point or are there other ways to help like donations of supplies, refurbished computers, iPads, et cetera.
- Yes and yes. We currently have a significant matching grant that we are fundraising for through the end of this year. So right now financial support is one of the best ways especially as we’re trying to build a campus, have an emergency fund that will allow us to activate any of our different kinds of plans that we’re currency planning for in the face of what’s happening in Afghanistan. But yes the trick with donations of computers and other items, is if people take responsibility to ship it to Afghanistan, we gladly take it. But sometimes the shipment cost is much higher than the item itself. And so it becomes easier to use the funds to buy new computers, for instance, in Kabul as opposed to getting used computers. So it really depends. People can sign up to become tutors. Yes, as a fundraiser, Janine I know you appreciate that. You know, financial support is always such such great relief and allow us to focus on really what we wanna focus on which is the operation of the school. But, you know there are other ways to get involved and getting each. I think one of the best ways is to talk about SOLA and talk about our mission and vision in Afghanistan with your friends and with your family and with your network. And get in touch if you think that other people want to hear more about SOLA. Please get in touch with us. There are many ways that you can actually directly link with me. There’s a email address on our website at info or even president at SOLA. I get those all the time. My colleagues send me emails that are addressed to me to read. So yeah, please get in touch if you have ideas.
- Yeah, my idea, so I’m a huge supporter of SOLA. I make monthly, I do recurring gifts, which again as a fundraiser, and actually I think as a philanthropist, I think this is one very easy way to support the things you think are really important and making an impact in the world. And SOLA most certainly is and Shabana you are most certainly are so.
- Thank you so much for that. I didn’t exactly acknowledge that publicly, but hank you so much, now that you’ve mentioned, thank you.
- You are welcomed. It makes me feel good every single month to know that that is going to good. And because of the challenge grant now is a good moment. And somebody else asked in the chat, if we can post the link to the giving page and where the match is. And so we will have that posted in the chat. And then I have one last question because we are getting, wait, do I have any last questions? I do not, I don’t have any last questions. So my last question for you, Shabana as we’re leaving tell me something that brings you joy, that brings you joy and hope on a regular basis.
- Oh my gosh, there are a lot of things. I’m a very happy fulfilled person. I think maybe it’s comes with the territory of the work I do, I have chosen to do. It brings me so much fulfillment and I say, on different days, it can be different things that bring me joy. But one of the things that consistently without a doubt brings me a lot of joy and a lot of hope and positivity is when I talk to our young students and listen to them, talk about their future plans, it is so uplifting. When I look at Afghanistan’s future through lens of these young girls at SOLA and their dreams and aspirations, I only see a bright, bright future ahead of Afghanistan. And that’s honestly what gets me working and feeling determined for it so, so, so strongly. Yeah, I mean, it guides my life and my lifestyle. My husband and I remained engaged for close to five years because we kept on postponing our plans and it had a lot to do with SOLA and how things were working out with SOLA. But that really brings me joy. And I think there are also other things that bring me joy. And, you know, even when I speak with people outside of Afghanistan about SOLA and how they respond to it and how they take the message in and how seeing other people feel inspired makes me, actually makes me in return inspired even more. There’s good in the world, it’s well and alive.
- Good, thank you. Okay, if we have time for one more question, I do. One more with good Meg.
- We probably should wrap it up ‘cause it’s after 1:30
- We’re running into the end from here we are.
- But SOLA is reachable. So if you have more questions, I encourage you to reach out to all the good people that are working at SOLA. And I just wanna say, wow, and thank you. Shabana congratulations for the incredible work you’re doing and how you’re doing it. I think to say that you’re an inspiration is such an understatement and just, you know, wanna, we’re so proud of you talk about wanting to cry. You could do that, right? You’re just such a role model. And Janine, you did this interview beautifully. What a fabulous conversation between the two of you. I thank you for that. And I thank everyone that joined us today and we recorded this. So those who didn’t catch it are going to love it also. So thank you everyone and—
- Happy 10th reunion reunion!
- Happy 10th reunion.
- Happy reunion everyone.
- Thank you, I do wanna say my absolute heartfelt and sincere thanks for this recognition. I really feel really honored and humbled by this and almost in a way I feel like I don’t deserve this. But with this recognition, I wanna say that I don’t feel like I’m getting this alone. I remember spending four of my years connecting with the people in town. And I know that every person who’s been part of SOLA’s journey from Middlebury community and beyond are being recognized with me and I wanna take this moment for whoever listens and is listening in the future to this, to thank everyone for being such strong and committed members of this global village that is behind SOLA and what has made it possible. So thank you. Thank you so much for this recognition.
- Thank you everyone.