A partnership for hope
The Taliban has limited access to education for Afghan women and teenage girls. But Arizona State University and a Canadian nonprofit have teamed up to provide online English-language courses to 2,000 students.
More than 15,000 Afghan women have applied to the program, and the partners, Arizona State’s Education for Humanity program and Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, say they plan to educate all of them.
“They are going through a dark time, and they are losing hope,” said Murwarid Ziayee, senior director for the Canadian nonprofit. “We want to bring hope and light.”
In August 2021, the Taliban seized control of the Afghan government and promised a return to a conservative strain of Islam, one that is opposed to the education of women and girls. Universities were closed to female students, and formal education for girls ends typically at the sixth grade.
Canadian Women, the nonprofit, has worked in Afghanistan for more than 25 years, advocating for equal education and human rights. Over the years, it has offered literacy courses, trained teachers, and set up community libraries and science labs.
Arizona State started Education for Humanity in 2017 as an effort to use the university’s expertise in online education to meet the needs caused by the growing refugee crisis around the globe, said Nick Sabato, the program’s senior director. Only about 5 percent of young refugees are able to access higher education.
While the ASU project was originally aimed at helping displaced students complete their degrees, organizers soon found that demand was greatest for English instruction and other short-term courses in areas like entrepreneurship and study skills. “It’s the first foot in the door,” Sabato said.
Most of Education for Humanity’s work has been focused on people displaced by conflict and humanitarian crises, in refugee camps or other communities in places like Lebanon, Rwanda, and the Palestinian territories. It has served more than 7,000 learners in 18 countries. Afghanistan presented a new challenge — while many Afghans remained in their homes, their access to education had been cut off.
Canadian Women, meanwhile, found that its strategies had to change, from education in community settings to coursework that women could complete in the privacy of their own homes. Demand also rose, and the organization, which has long worked with colleges and other education providers, was looking to increase its reach.
The two partners complement each other: Arizona State provides the educational coursework. Canadian Women, with its long experience in Afghanistan, can do outreach and organizes conversation groups and learning communities to provide academic assistance and help students practice their English.
In order to offer such wraparound support, the program is beginning with small cohorts of women, but interest has quickly grown as word of the English courses has spread through family and community networks. “It’s an astounding response,” Sabato said.
Canadian Women and ASU said they are committed to serving these students, but there are challenges. Chief among them is the reliability of internet access. In refugee camps, Education for Humanity has been able to boost bandwidth to improve connectivity, but that’s not possible in Afghanistan. Courses must be able to be accessed by cellphones, and the university is working to develop offline access to its modules.
Canadian Women gives grants to individuals and organizations for computers and Wi-Fi. It also maintains a library of virtual-education tools.
Among the women they are hoping to reach are those who need English skills to apply to study overseas or to work remotely with international-aid organizations.
Ziayee herself was a college student in 1996, when the Taliban previously came to power. Because she spoke English, she worked on the ground for Canadian Women, becoming country director. She’s now based in Canada.
Ziayee said the value of education for women is long term. Mothers who are educated are more likely to send their children to school. And Afghanistan will need an educated populace when it again shakes off Taliban control.
“The situation will change. The time will come,” she said. “And they will be prepared.”
Want to read more? Arizona State took in 64 Afghan women who fled the Taliban on its home campus. I wrote about other such students who have been studying at the University of Delaware. Colleges in Kentucky have mobilized to aid refugee and displaced students after the General Assembly passed a first-of-its-kind statewide scholarship. Last year, the U.S. Department of State approved a plan to make it easier for colleges to sponsor refugee students and help them resettle in the United States.
This is only tangentially related to higher education, but did you see this New York Times piece about a retired professor in California’s Central Valley who has been giving driving lessons to Afghan women? Gil Howard, known as Mr. Gil, has taught 400 immigrant women to drive, possibly more female drivers than in all of Afghanistan.