The dream of educating Afghan girls lives on | Shabana Basij-Rasikh

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2021

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this deeply moving talk, educator Shabana Basij-Rasikh shares the harrowing story of evacuating more than 250 students, staff and family members from the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA) -- the country’s first and only all-girls boarding school -- to Rwanda after the Taliban took power in 2021. An exceptional story of hope, resilience and dreaming big for future generations of Afghan girls -- and a challenge for the world to not look away.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hu. One of the most stunning political changes we witness this year is among the most tragic.
0:12.3	The fall of Afghanistan to Taliban forces meant immediate danger to women and girls who educator Shabana Besid Rasek has been working with for years.
0:22.0	In her talk from TED Women 2021, she shares her story of resilience, adaptation, and issues
0:28.8	a call to all of us to not look away from Afghanistan.
0:35.4	Nine years ago, I stood on a stage a lot like this one.
0:39.5	It was at the TED Woman Conference in Washington, D.C. back in 2012.
0:44.9	I was 22 years old, a woman with a college degree.
0:49.6	That's nothing too exceptional to say here in the United States.
0:54.3	In Afghanistan, my homeland,
0:57.0	women like me were the exception.
1:00.9	It had been a little over a decade since the fall of the Taliban regime,
1:05.0	a time when it was quite literally illegal for girls to go to school.
1:15.2	The Afghan people had spent that decade rebuilding our nation and our lives.
1:18.8	And when I stood on that TED woman stage,
1:24.2	I challenged the world to dare to educate Afghan girls.
1:28.2	The way I had just started doing at a place in Kabul called the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, or Sola.
1:33.5	For me, Afghanistan is a country of hope and boundless possibilities.
1:41.8	And every single day, the girls of Solar remind me of that.
1:48.4	Like me, they are dreaming big.
1:53.1	That was then.
1:57.7	And this is now.
2:00.2	And the Taliban are back.
	...

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