Afghan Girls Robotics Team Continues Education And Training In Qatar After Fleeing Taliban Danger – Forbes

Members of the award-winning Afghan Girls' Robotics Team arrived in Qatar to continue their ... [+] education with aid from Qatar Foundation, amid uncertainty brewing from the Taliban takeover.

Members of Afghanistans all-female robotics team, or The Afghan Dreamers have evacuated Afghanistan for Qatar, and are continuing their education and enriching their robotics skills through scholarships funded by Qatar Foundation and Qatar Fund for Development.

It was very scary for everybody and we had such a big responsibility to make sure theyre secure, Roya Mahboob, CEO of the Digital Citizen Fund, which is the parent organization of the robotics team said of the exit. DCF coordinated with Qatars government to obtain visas prior to the teams departure.

Team member Ayda Hayderpoor said, Nothing can be worse than leaving your loved ones behind. We were sad and cried and missed our families, but we are lucky to be safe and be able to continue our high school education at the Qatar Foundations Education City. Hayderpoor, 17, and her teammates began attending their new classes this week.

Qatari officials organized for nine members of the Afghan Dreamers flight to Doha at the onset of the Taliban takeover. The faces and names of these nine have more prominently been featured in the media, putting them at greater risk of danger had they remained in Afghanistan, Mahboob said. The Dreamers began with a few girls in 2017 in Herat, and has grown to 50 members, boasts awards from global competitions and made it on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2021. They won an award at Europes largest robotics festivalin 2017 for building a robot that uses solar energy for small-scale farms, and in 2020 with guidance from MIT constructedventilatorsfor Covid-19 patients at Afghanistan hospitals. The polarity between Taliban views and the political climate that these members are accustomed to is significant, and the new shift is predicted to further disrupt womens opportunities. Under western control, in addition to other freedoms, 1.6 million more women entered the workforce in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, and in an attempt to continue the upward trend and ensure the safety of the Dreamers, Qatars aid is an early step toward advocating for a new generation of women.

The girls have resettled at Education Citya campus with multiple academic institutionsand will have opportunities to strengthen their skills at Qatar Foundation member universities including Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M University, according to a September 7 press release. For Hayderpoor, focusing on the next competition is her priority, and attending university in a field that we love and is top in technology, is the next objective.

Qatar and the DCF were proactive in finding refuge for the girls, and Mahboob cited wartimes circumstantial conflict as a cause for concern. Taliban aside, chaos in the country could spur other factions that dont favor female leaders to leverage the shift to ultra-conservatism and marginalize these girls, she explained. The escape was important because, you might have a lot of people who support you, but you might also have a small group of people who dont like what youre doing and it might give them the opportunity to harm you.

Shortly before Taliban resurgence and the republics collapse, the administration aimed to continue progress and draft new initiativesone of them to increase womens presence in technology with the robotics team in mind, according to former Deputy Minister of Women Affairs Hosna Jalil.

Jalil, who is also the former Deputy Minister of Interior Affairs and the first woman to hold a senior position in that ministry, extols the robotics team and views them as a paragon of progress and success. What I have learned from these girls is, they wont give up, she said. They start something and they dont give up; they make it happen. Im absolutely proud of these teenagerstheir dedication, their passion, their determinationit keeps inspiring me.

In 2019 President Ashraf Ghani approved aproject to developa larger institute for the Dreamers at Kabul University that would span six acres at $2 million per acre, according to Mahboob. Completion of the project now remains unseen. Mahboob sees her dedication toward young women not as a charitable activity, but as work that she should be doing for her country. They are the young generation that is going to build Afghanistan 2.0.Market sizefor robotics is expected to reach $499 billion by 2025, according to a 2021 Technology and Innovation Report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, but enriching the girls lives is on Mahboobs mind. Creating space for girls in tech has helped build their confidence and garner more respect in society, Mahboob said. It changed their family members minds when the girls started to do mechanical stuff at the homerepair radio and trying to fix thingsand their brothers or their fathers were so surprised, they like it.

Director General of Qatar Fund for Development Khalifa bin Jassim Al Kuwari said the venture offers high-quality technical training in the use of modern technologies that will enable Afghani female students to acquire the skills and knowledge that will allow them to be appropriately qualified and in demand within the labor market.

Hayderpoor is hopeful for the future and stands by her rights.If you are a male or female, still you are human and all the humans have their own rights, she said. She asks that these rights, specifically the right to an education, be observed. All the girls and women in Afghanistan deserve that.

Dozens of other girls from the robotics club have remained in Afghanistan, choosing to continue their education there, if and when possible. Mahboob ensures that the girls will not be abandoned. We will never give up on them.

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Afghan Girls Robotics Team Continues Education And Training In Qatar After Fleeing Taliban Danger - Forbes