Support for my sister, a teacher in Afghanistan

My name is Masoud and I am raising funds for my sister, who is a teacher in Herat (Afghanistan), but is no longer allowed to work, after the Taliban banned high-school education for girls.

 

My sister Sorayya is one of the strongest people I know. Born in Iran to a family of Afghan refugees, she had been the first person in our whole extended family to have finished University. This has not been easy, the student fees for Afghan refugees in Iran were entirely unaffordable for our family and some in our (rather conservative) family had been against a woman going studying. But, with the support of our mother, she did what no woman in our family had done before: in the early 2000s, soon after the Taliban have been removed from power and girls were finally able to go to school and attend University, she returned to our city Herat, where she got a degree in mathematics. She had a clear vision: she wanted to teach girls maths. Despite the dangers she faced as a working woman, commuting every day through a city, plagued with US-occupation-era security threats, the passion for the job gave her purpose in life. She taught hundreds of high-school girls maths for over a decade and was a beloved teached and a respected member of the community. Until everything changed this summer.

 

When the Taliban came to power again, she did not believe their announcements that they are the Taliban "2.0" and that things will be different -- she feared it was just a matter of time when they will outlaw her profession, by declaring it unnecessary for girls over 12 years (so the same high-school girls she had been teaching) to receive an education. Indeed, it took less than a couple of weeks until her high-school was closed, the girls were sent home and all the teachers were jobless overnight.

 

While the media's attention has moved away from Afghanistan and its people, the grim reality persists. My sister Sorayya has been really struggling the last couple of weeks. Not only has she lost all her income, she had lost her purpose in life, she can no longer do the one thing she loved doing the most, the thing she was so good at. She is now a prisoner in her own home: she is not allowed to work, or even leave her house without a male chaperone.

 

I have been feeling angry, sad, despairing and utterly powerless about what is going on in my country (for decades, really, the recent months just being the tip of this giant iceberg). There is nothing I can do to help Sorayya get back her job teaching at her high-school in Herat. What I can do, though, is try to raise money to support her through this difficult situation. Here is where I am turning to you for help.

 

Sorayya used to earn around 400 euros per months, working at the public school for girls and doing some extra teaching at a private school in the afternoons. She had been financially independent for almost a decade and this has been a source of great pride and independence for her, she had even been supporting our parents financially in the times of trouble. When she married last year, she was the main bread-winner in the household. Since the Taliban came to power, the only income they have had had come from her husband's precarious job as an occasional day-labourer, which had not been enough to cover the expenses.

 

I am aiming to raise 4800 euros, to cover the loss of Sorayya's wages for the next 12 months, and help her at least with the existential uncertainties of her new reality. I would be grateful for all of your support, even if it does not all come at once (this is a long-term campaign, I would send her regular installments). Please share this call with your friends and family and donate if you can. If we raise more than the money we need to support Sorayya, the extra money would go to supporting Sorayya's female teacher colleagues, who also lost their jobs and whose loss of job affects either their livelihood or their independence in relation to their family and spouses.