By Lucy Ferriss | President of the Board
For more than three years now, Afghan Female Student Outreach has been supplying its students with the essential tool for them to learn: access to the internet. With schools closed to girls and women since 2022, we keep hope and the possibility of a future alive for 1,200 young women in Afghanistan through live, remote classes that build their capacity and open doors to scholarships and admission at universityies worldwide. But none of this can happen if they cannot connect.
The current Afghan regime knows this crucial fact, and they have responded, over the last four months, by increasing the costs of acessing the internet by 40%. What's more, as we have managed to find admission for our students in credit-bearing university programs online, their need for access, as full-time college students, has increased exponentially.
Almost all our students connect via mobile data, from their phone or tablets. Even those few who have access to fibe-optic service find it goes out repeatedly, so they need data backup.
The help of the GlobalGiving community to our initiative has been invaluable. This fall, we sent 20 students abroad and enrolled 24 in an online undergraduate degree program. We could not have done this without your support. But 6,000 women remain on our wait list, and the main factor that delays their admission to AFSO is the need for more robust funding for internet access.
Our student Mahsa, the first Afghan ever to earn the Global Leaders Scholarship from Duke University, reports from its campus in Kunshan, China: "It's so quiet here. So green. I can think. The possibilities for my future are wide open. I owe it all to AFSO."
Help us to continue empowering students like Mahsa. Give the Gift of Data this season. And thank you.
By Lucy Ferriss | Board President
By Lucy Ferriss | President of the Board
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
