SOLA—School of Leadership for girls, Afghanistan 2021 - the Story of a Year

School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA)

2021 ends with our SOLA community safe and our students continuing their educations.

There’s a lot of emotion packed into that one sentence.

What you’re about to read is, to say it simply, the evolving story of our school. I have so much to tell you and so much I want you to know, and I’m going to start by taking you through 2021 month-by-month. Given the length of this piece, I’m keeping each month’s synopsis to just two sentences.

January

There is a sense of relative normalcy to January, and so much pride: we receive more than 260 applications from 31 provinces. Both of these numbers are all-time highs, and they beautifully represent the growing breadth of SOLA’s acceptance among Afghan families nationwide.

February

We begin the interview and evaluation process for our prospective students with the goal of finding roughly 16 girls to join us as 6th graders. We do this as every day – quite literally every day – we hear new reports of targeted assassinations across Afghanistan.

March

The 2020 school year comes to a close: it can be easy for some to forget the profound damage that COVID wreaked on Afghanistan starting the previous March, not least to our education system – but SOLA, as a boarding school, was well-positioned to keep our girls on campus through the winter to maintain continuity of learning. We send all these girls home for a short break, and we prepare to welcome not 16 but rather 25 new students: 19 6thgraders and 6 members of our first-ever pre-6th grade class, girls with little to no formal education but in whom we see extraordinary potential as young learners.

April

The 2021 school year begins for us in Kabul: for the first time, we are a school of grades 6-11 (of course, we’re also joined by our first group of pre-6th graders) and our students hail from 28 provinces, another all-time high. The joy on campus and in me is extraordinary – and it is swept away by the White House’s announcement of America’s imminent and unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan.

May

My team and I meet with contacts in Washington as we work to get a sense of US policy planning. As we do, our students head home for their 1st Eid holiday: they’re traveling out into 28 provinces, and we’re closely following the news of instability in each one.

June

Our students are back on campus. As they resume their studies, my team and I intensify our contingency planning; we are increasingly looking at options to move SOLA overseas for a study abroad program.

July

Our students leave campus for their 2nd Eid holiday, having successfully negotiated with teachers and administration for a longer-than-usual break, which I suppose shows that some things never change when it comes to our girls’ remarkable talents. We are tracking each student’s home district against the districts falling to the Taliban, and our contingency planning is taking on new urgency. 

August

I’m going to break my two-sentence rule for August. I want to take you through this month in bullet points:

·      August 1: our students return to campus following their Eid break.

·      August 5: I head to Rwanda to talk with the Minister of Education and members of the president’s team about our study abroad plans.

·      August 10: I’m back in Kabul, and Rwanda gives those plans official approval.

·      August 15: the Taliban take Kabul.

·      August 20: the SOLA community completes our evacuation to Doha, Qatar.

·      August 25: we arrive in Rwanda.

·      August 30: we mark our 2nd day of classes at our new Rwandan campus.

August 2021 feels like one long day. It felt like that while I lived it, and it feels like that now. 

September

Classes continue in Rwanda, which is a joyous thing for me to write. I’ll also, for the first time publicly, write this: some of our girls begin the process of departing Rwanda to attend boarding schools in the US – and while I can’t share many details for reasons of security and privacy, I am extraordinarily grateful for the partnerships we’ve developed with these boarding schools, each one of which has been so generous to our girls.

October

Every year on October 11th the world marks International Day of the Girl, and this year, our students celebrate a bit differently than in the past. As always, they celebrate being girls – but this year, they also celebrate their love for Afghanistan, the only home that most of them have ever known, and one that’s now changed utterly.

November

There is a growing feeling of normalcy, of routine for us in Rwanda – it’s a feeling I write about in one of my columns for The Washington Post, and it’s a feeling for which I’ll always be grateful. As classes continue, and as we keep our eyes fixed on the news from Afghanistan, we look to expand our Rwandan operations.

December

I return to the stage at TEDWomen for the first time in nine years and urge the world not to look away from Afghanistan; meanwhile, we begin the hiring process that will bring new teachers to our Rwandan campus. We do all this, and I sit down and write, and in these words you and I meet, right now, at the turning of the year.

2022: The pivot point

I want to make this unambiguously clear:

I cannot, do not, and will not submit to the Taliban’s vision for Afghanistan. No one on my team does. From this core principle, SOLA’s future flows.

We stand at a pivot point for our school, a time of both continuity and great change. In January, I plan to speak publicly about what the new year holds for us – for right now, I’ll simply say that we intend to enroll new students in 2022 and bring them to us in Rwanda. SOLA is going to grow, and grow significantly.

Afghanistan stands at a pivot point, too. I have no difficulty being vulnerable in front of a global audience, and I have no difficulty telling you that I receive many messages from Afghans still in Kabul and in the provinces, and I feel utterly suffocated by the despair and anguish that is stalking our country even as you read this.

People are starving. 50% of the Afghan population is living in a state of food insecurity. 50%. The magnitude of the collapse since August and the reality of what this winter will bring is monstrous.

The international community does understand, and I know some amount of aid will find its way to Afghanistan, but international aid is a short-term bandage over an endlessly weeping wound. This wound only begins to heal when we adopt the long-term strategy of ensuring access to education, especially for girls. This is what eradicates poverty, strengthens families, and changes societies.

SOLA’s mission is and always will be to educate Afghan girls. This is our investment in the future, one where every Afghan girl will have access to education from elementary through secondary school – and you are with us as we move into 2022 and all the years beyond. Thank you. I’m so happy that you’re here.