How a college student empowered Afghan girls to 'lean in' through education

今回は、英語でのインタビュー記事です！大学生の時に、アフガニスタンの女の子達のために図書館を立ち上げたSajiaさんにインタビューを行いました！後日、日本語版も掲載する予定ですので、お楽しみに！

Welcome to Lean In Tokyo's blog! 

I'm Risako, an educational program specialist at Lean In Tokyo🙌 This series is a part of our initiative to shed light on gender-related issues in education✏️

I had the fantastic opportunity to interview Sajia Darwish, the founder of the Baale Parwaz Library, a Kabul-based library and resource center that provides carefully curated books, supplemental classes, educational resources for girls and women in Afghanistan.

Sajia Darwish
Founder of the Baale Parwaz Library
Sajia was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan. At the age of 14, she received a scholarship to attend a boarding school in the United States. Sajia then graduated from Mount Holyoke College. She is the founder of Baale Parwaz, a library and resource center in Kabul. Sajia is also an incoming master's student at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, and the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

Building a library for Afghan girls to 'lean in'

Risako: I'm so excited to have you as our guest! Sajia and I were supposed to study together at Stanford from this fall, but unfortunately, I have decided to defer due to the spread of COVID-19. It is still lovely to be able to keep in touch with you.

First of all, could you briefly tell us about yourself? What social issues are you trying to solve?

Sajia: I was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan. I then moved to the United States as a teenager and graduated from Mount Holyoke College.
Even though I received my higher education in the U.S., I was always hoping to return to Afghanistan to solve our local issues.

Afghanistan struggles to tackle many forms of problems, such as poverty, educational inequality, and domestic relations. As a woman, I especially wanted to support young girls in Afghanistan.

Risako: Why did you decide to focus on building a library for girls, instead of taking other approaches?

Sajia: The first thing that I wanted to focus on was literacy. According to the United Nations, only 12 percent of Afghan women are literate.

The culture of reading has been lost in Afghanistan because of continuing conflicts. There are not many books for children nor publishing companies in general. Also, books are often written in a different dialect, so children are not able to read them.

I remember in my childhood when my father wanted to buy me a book, but he could not find any children's books in shops. This was ten years ago. Things have changed since then, but there are still not enough books and physical spaces for children to read.

In Afghanistan, it’s hard for girls to read or study at home because their family sizes are big, and many siblings share their rooms. As such, their rooms can be very noisy and distracting, which is not an ideal environment to learn.

I didn't want just to collect thousands of books, but I also wanted to create a space where girls can communicate and talk about what they have learned from reading.

Risako: How did you manage to collect all those books when there are not many publishing companies in Afghanistan?

Sajia: That's a good question! Few organizations in Afghanistan publish Afghan folklore and children's books, so we obtained several books from them. We also asked school teachers in the United States for their suggestions on children's books and acquired books from there.

Since those books were written in English and not in Afghan Farsi, we collected picture books without words, so that children can still understand the story without requiring literacy skills.

I loved how every Afghan child was reading and seeing these American stories from their perspectives.

Overcoming obstacles with resilience

Risako: I really respect what you have done for the Afghan children.

Was it challenging at first to start such a project?

Sajia: Yes, it was. I started this project during the summer of 2016 when I was still an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke.

I visited the Ministry of Education in Afghanistan to request approval to build a library. However, no one even wanted to meet me or hear my story. All men run the ministry, so they didn't quite understand the kind of hardships girls and women are going through. They were also skeptical of my idea because I received my higher education from the U.S. and not Afghanistan.

It took me three entire months and countless several visits to get approval from the ministry. When I finally succeeded, the challenge was not over yet; I now had to convince many parents to allow their daughters to visit our library.

Risako: It must have been challenging, especially in a society where traditional values are profoundly respected. How did you overcome the challenges that you faced even after receiving approval from the ministry?

Sajia: When I was negotiating with the ministry, I kept telling the story of how building this library can improve so many lives. One day, they finally said, 'why don't you give it a try.'

This process was the same for every negotiation that followed. No matter how long it took, I continued to tell my own story, then the stories of Afghan girls and women to convince supporters and families.

Today, many staff members are running our library. I don't need to be at the site anymore, since others are taking initiatives to provide resources to communities. Even under the current COVID-19 pandemic, these staff members have managed to offer courses online. 

This transition was very swift, and I am so proud of our ability to support girls in such a difficult situation.

Risako: That's amazing! What kind of impacts do you see as a result?

Sajia: I named the library 'Baale Parwaz,’ which means 'the wings to fly' because I wanted to provide resources to girls that can help them become anything that they want to be.

Today, over 500 students visit the library each day. We now provide a variety of courses like reading clubs, self-defense, STEM, health education, and arts. Little by little, we are seeing the positive changes in girls and women in our communities.

Gender stereotypes suppress the voices of girls

Risako: What you have started to improve the literacy of girls and women, has now grown into enhancing the lives of Afghan girls and women! What kind of other challenges do women face in these communities?

Sajia: It was unexpected, but yes! As for other challenges, we also receive many concerns from girls and women about the stigma against women. Many of these issues are related to women's health.

For instance, there is a strong bias against menstruation in our culture. It is considered a taboo, and women are supposed to hide it from men, including fathers and brothers. When menstruating, women are not allowed to pray with others because menstruation is regarded as dirty.

Many girls hide their menstruation cramps so that their families or neighbors won't find out that they have their periods. They are embarrassed.

So at our library, we have a workshop for girls to talk about menstrual hygiene and help them understand why it should not be taboo.

Another problem that girls face is child marriage. Unfortunately, such a practice is still happening in Afghanistan.

I recently read that 90% of parents in Afghanistan believe that the age of graduating from high school, or even secondary school, is appropriate for their daughters to get married. And that's what happens even to this day.

Even if a girl is attending high school, she is forced to leave once she is married and becomes pregnant. In the worst cases, these girls suffer from domestic violence from their husbands. Many cases of domestic violence happen at individual households, where women hold back from raising their voices.

We are trying to let these parents understand how early marriage for their daughters can be harmful, and many girls see our staff members at the library as counselors. However, none of us are experts in this field.

I hope to explore how to implement a practical approach to protect these girls so that they are not forced to give up their education and continue to learn at schools.

Risako: Japan still faces these gender stereotypes, too, but in different ways. However, we do yet have a social stigma against talking publicly about women's health, including menstruation.

Sajia: I always thought that Japan was doing much, much better. But yes, gender stereotypes are everywhere around the world in every format.

Since there is not much data about women's health in Afghanistan, I want to collect data and be able to analyze them when I pursue my master's degree.

Ownership is empowerment 

Risako: You have mentioned before that there your library has more staff members now, and that you no longer need to be there to run courses physically. How did you manage to involve so many people?

Sajia: I think it's about giving these girls ownership and giving these girls opportunities to be able to say that they belong to this community.

I believe in making changes by collaborating with different people, so I encourage these girls and women to express their ideas. It's essential to listen to people about things that they wish to make changes about, and ask 'how would you change it?'.

Risako: That is inspiring because what you have always been doing with the library project is giving girls ownership of their life decisions, not just with staff members. I agree that it's vital, as many of these girl's decisions have been controlled by men.

Sajia: Yes, and these girls at our library are learning that once they are heard, they can do anything with their ideas and resilience. They now come up to us staff members and propose to make changes about something. We ask them how we can support them, and the girls just run their projects on their own! Of course, they may fail in the first place, but they are learning from their failures.

We had a girl who was once a student at our library, and now she works with us as a manager. She just started a new project at the library. Because we value the culture of listening to others and empowering each other to take action, more girls are willing to give back to this community in the future.

To further support these girls, I hope to conduct research about mental health and collect data on women as I have mentioned. I hope for better access to education for Afghan girls in the coming generations.

Risako: I look forward to your future endeavors, and when I see you in California, we will definitely collaborate to make changes for and with girls all around the world! Thank you so much for your time today.

Check out the Baale Parwaz Library's Facebook page!