About Us
Mission
Afghan Female Student Outreach (AFSO) is a volunteer non-profit organization committed to helping return Afghan women to intellectual and professional life by way of real-time, synchronous distance learning in the liberal arts and sciences, engineering, and health sciences, taught by university professors throughout North America, Europe, and the Middle East (including Trinity College, Wesleyan University, University of Connecticut, Pennsylvania State University, Carleton University, New York University, the University of Turino, and more). We aim to educate university women at all levels, including:
• pre-college students in need of English language learning to pursue university courses;
• undergraduate students at all levels who need both to improve their English and to restore and maintain their intellectual engagement with a particular major or field of inquiry;
• undergraduate students and recent university graduates with advanced English ability who seek courses in their major field;
• students at all levels who seek an academic bridge between their current situation and eventual enrollment in a degree-granting institution online or outside Afghanistan.
Our immediate goal is to re-engage women at all university levels in the academic and professional learning from which they have been barred in Afghanistan. Our long-term goal is to help educate the future leaders of Afghanistan, who will have the education and experience they need to help restore their country, and especially its women, if and when the regime changes. Because it is crucial to the stability of a future Afghanistan that its many provinces and ethnicities be represented among those future leaders, we are committed to recruiting and educating women from both dominant and underrepresented communities within Afghanistan.
Board of Directors
Lucy Ferriss, President
Saleh Keshawarz, Vice-President
Janet Bauer, Vice-President
Rahman Azari
Frances Nixon Denote
Homeira Qadari
Judy Lewis
Bobbie Smolow
Ahmad Amran Fatih, Executive Director
. . .
AFSO comprises a rotating cohort of active and retired university and college professors.