STUDENTS CROSSING THE BRIDGE
From AFSO into the World
Following the AFSO Pathway--through English classes, university content courses, credit-bearing courses with GHEA, guidance counseling, TOEFL test preparation, and the Colloquium--our students are meeting the steep challenges of earning scholarships and making their way from Afghanistan into a future that will give them the tools they need to help their country.
Nadia
Growing up in a tailor's family in Bamyan, Nadia learned the complex craft of sewing and embroidering traditional clothing from a young age. She also worked often without electricity, damaging her eyes. When the economy collapsed and her father's business suffered, the family moved back to their ancestral village in the mountains, where there was neither electricity nor internet. For a time, Nadia stayed behind in Bamyan to study, but the Taliban would burst into her small room and demand to know where her father was and why she lived alone. Finally she walked three days to the village, where it took 3 weeks for her feet to heal. As soon as she could walk again, she made her way to the top of the mountain, where she could get a mobile phone signal, and wrote to ask AFSO for books she could download.
Now, with university preparation and a high TOEFL score, Nadia has an Open Doors scholarship to Russia. If she can scrape together funding for visa and travel, she will start at a university in Moscow in September 2026.
Shukrana
My fingers hovered between fire and frost in the crowded Mandawi market of Kabul. A clay brazier burned just a few feet away, but the cold winter air numbed my hands until they turned red and stiff. I carried one bag of cleaned and roasted chickpeas on my head and two in my hands. As I drew closer to the dry fruit stall, the streets grew crowded and loud, and no one could hear me. I feared my words would go unheard amid the clamor. Each step I took on my frozen feet to sell my chickpeas reminded me: if I sold enough today, I could return to my books tomorrow.
Shukrana's journey since her time selling chickpeas has include university preparation classes in analytical writing, research, and TOEFL preparation at AFSO. Now she has been awarded a merit scholarship from Hult International Business School and is waiting to hear if funding can increase to cover her need.
Khumari
“Maybe you will marry a rich man,” Khumari’s teacher told her as she logged onto an ancient computer provided by a relief agency. U.S. forces were still in Afghanistan. K. wondered if she would ever work on a computer whose screen wasn’t cracked. This machine was as fragile as her chance to learn on it.
Khumari’s brothers escaped to Germany during the chaotic airlift out of Kabul in 2021. Soon after, the Taliban regime forbade women to study past age 12.
Khumari sequestered at home, unable to go out without a male chaperone, with 7 people in a 3-room apartment. She gathered her persecuted girlfriends and converted her family’s living room into a secret classroom by putting curtains on the windows. When her mother died, her disabled younger sister needed more help. Her father’s income would never cover the costs of university tuition abroad.
But coding did not care about gender.
At AFSO, Khumari completed online courses in English, statistics and computer science. She also graduated from the Launch School, where she became a full-stack software engineer. With AFSO's help, she earned a high TOEFL score—and at last, a scholarship to Bard College in Germany. If funds are available for travel, visa, and resettlement, she can be reunited with her brothers.
Nilab
Nilab had completed two years of medical studies at Balkh University when the Taliban closed education for women. Immediately she pivoted and began taking classes with AFSO in 2023. Since 2024, she has also been completing credit-bearing coursework with the Global Higher Education Alliance (GHEA), and she hopes to matriculate in the Bard Global Degree program beginning in September 2026.
Currently, Nilab is beginning a year as a Global Engagement Fellow with GHEA, for which her project is an online curriculum for girls in her province, focusing on English proficiency, Chemistry, Math, and Biology. She has founded a new entity, Aurora Education, to signal the dawn of new hope for the women of northern Afghanistan.
Nilab's story, "The Day the Leaf Became a Universe," was chosen for animation by Afghans for Progressive Thinking. Enjoy!
