An online school brings Afghan girls hope

Angela Ghayour, a former Afghan teacher, writes about creating the Herat Online School after the Taliban’s takeover. (Courtesy of Angela Ghayour)

Angela Ghayour, a former Afghan teacher, writes about creating the Herat Online School after the Taliban’s takeover.

In 1992 just when the civil war between different Mujahideen ethnic groups started in Afghanistan, my family and I fled to our neighboring country, Iran. As an Afghan refugee, according to the laws in Iran, I was not allowed to attend school. I was 8 years old then, and barred from receiving an education.

Only after five years of living as a refugee was I able to take classes in Iran. But after being out of school for so long, the experience of a conditional, fragmented education created a lot of stress for me. I couldn’t have the excitement of freedom in my education. I carried hope for the future, but I worried constantly about the possibility of losing my rights again.

I knew this anxiety also affected children back in Afghanistan. So after finishing high school in Iran, I returned to my homeland in 2002 to study Persian literature at Herat University. During my studies, I was teaching at a private primary school. After graduating from university, I became a high school teacher in Herat. The years I spent in Afghan classrooms were filled with different emotions. I learned how important education was to creating a peaceful, more equal country for the next generation of Afghans. When I share my knowledge with other people, I feel there is a shiny future in our hands — not for a day, but forever.

But this was a difficult period in Afghanistan — especially for girls and women. Some of my students were older than me, but they were not in a good educational position due to many years of deprivation of education during the first period of Taliban occupation in Afghanistan. During this time, I was always thinking of establishing a sustainable educational institution without sociopolitical preconditions for attending, where Afghan girls could learn without stress or fear.

When the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August 2021, I remembered those girls who were banned from education during the last government of the Taliban (1996–2001). Their feelings, wishes and essential need for education became the source of my motivation. After 20 years of relative peace, Afghanistan’s girls and women were once again thrown into an unpredictable situation — and I decided to set up an online school that would meet their needs and help them learn amid the crisis.

Today, in the educational community of Herat Online School, men, women and children with different languages, dialects, ethnicities and identities learn together — whether they are teachers or students. Their democratic behavior and attitude have caused growth and positive reactions to each other’s differences. Students at the Herat Online School believe they can change their lives through hope and knowledge instead of hatred and fear.

When I started the first class, I couldn’t believe I recruited more than 700 volunteer teachers using social media in less than a month. I couldn’t believe more than 80 psychologists would volunteer to alleviate their emotional pains. Today, more than 2,200 children and young people — 1,500 of them girls — who were deprived of education are enrolled in Herat Online School, learning over 85 topics from creative writing and psychology to coding and history. They find us through the school’s social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. About 60% of our students are in Afghanistan, and the rest are refugees who fled to other countries when the Taliban took over.

My students from around the world send me messages full of happiness, hope and love for education. Families who paid for private lessons for their children have found their financial stress alleviated. Children coping with the emotional shock of the situation have received help from our school psychologists. And Afghan girls who felt hopeless after their schools closed are learning subjects they were never taught in school, like creating writing and computer coding.

My wish and view are that this beautiful situation is possible in Afghanistan too. In contrast with what we hear, the solution to peace in our country is an educational path that connects Afghan citizens in a constructive way, with each other and for each other.

“The solution to peace in our country is an educational path that connects Afghan citizens in a constructive way, with each other and for each other.”

— Angela Ghayour

The biggest obstacle in our path is the financial crisis that has left many families unable to afford the educational needs of their children. Amid this humanitarian crisis and famine many families are forced to marry off their daughters instead of sending them to school. In some regions, this catastrophe happens to girls as young as 9 years old.

Yet realizing Afghan girls’ rights to education will help alleviate this economic crisis. Studies have shown the economic impact of educating a girl in Afghanistan is more than double that for educating a boy. We need to implement a mechanism that creates a competitive advantage for the education of girls and emphasizes the economic benefits of girls’ education in Afghanistan. This will not only encourage parents to send their daughters to school, but change the position of women and girls within the structure of Afghanistan’s society.

My dear daughters at the Herat Online School always say, "When everyone left Afghanistan, you came back and the school gave us hope." They give me hope too. With knowledge and action, Afghan girls have the power to build a safer and more peaceful future for our country.