Categories
Blog News

Tuesday, August 28th event recap: “Building Their Future: How Girls’ Schools in Afghanistan Are Preventing Early Marriage”

“How does a building prevent early marriage?” This is the question Ginna Brelsford poses to the  audience at Sahar’s co-hosted event with Global Washington on Tuesday, August 28th 2018. “What is the role of a safe, beautiful, physical space?” she asks.

At the event, Sahar showed why it is “shining example” for small nonprofits. With an eloquent presentation, Ginna Brelsford, Dave Miller, and Afghan Fellow Shogofa Amini, shared both powerful statistics as well as personal anecdotes to illustrate the importance of Sahar’s work. “How are Girls’ Schools in Afghanistan Preventing Early Marriage?” The answer, as the presentation revealed, is in what lies deeper than just the building. It’s the work to train teachers and give girls skills to open the minds of their communities, ultimately breaking down years of barriers for women in Afghanistan. With Sahar’s new boarding school project, the opportunity to change lives and the future of Afghanistan’s next generation is here. With one school, Sahar creates a new model.

Dave Miller, the CEO of Miller Hull Architecture, has chosen to use his talents to support education for those who need it most. With Sahar’s latest building project in 2015, the Gawhar Khatoon school, Miller Hull and the UW School of Architecture partnered with Sahar to develop a culturally appropriate, practical, and ground-breaking design. So ground-breaking, in fact, that it received the AIA award for its success – one of the top awards in Architecture.

For Sahar’s Afghan fellow Shogofa Amini, everything and everyone around her seemed to be a barrier to an education. As she shares, her education was stopped for six years as a result of Taliban rule. “They couldn’t win,” she says. “I’m here today.” A story of persevering through obstacles and fighting against all odds is just one of many girls taking charge of their lives. With Sahar’s work already, 200,000 girls have been educated to date. These girls are changing their communities, and giving girls and young women the opportunities that everyone deserves. With this new boarding school, Sahar and Miller Hull are not only breaking ground architecturally: “When people drive by, they see a physical structure full of beauty,” says Ginna. “But also the power to change what can be done in Afghanistan.”

“Building partnerships is critical,” says Dave Miller. “The more we can do it in a peaceful way, the better we can do in the world.” Partnerships, like the one between Sahar and Miller Hull, allow for positive change in the world, and create opportunities for those who need them most. Through collaboration across cultural, ethnic, and occupational lines, the future can be made hopeful for every human. GlobalWA is an organization that highlights the power of working together, we are grateful for the opportunity to co-host this event. Also, thank you to Miller Hull Partnership for devoting time to a brighter tomorrow for Afghanistan’s young women.

Full video of the event here.
Recap video of event here.

-Charlotte Gong, Sahar Intern

 

Categories
Blog News

FREE Sahar co-hosted event on Friday, September 14th 2018!

How does Design and the Built Environment impact Global Education?
Presented by: Sahar Education + Miller Hull Partnership

Friday, September 14th 2018
5:30PM – 8:00PM

Center for Architecture and Design
1010 Western Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104

FREE, please RSVP HERE.

Practitioners in the fields of architecture, design, non profits, and the University of Washington will join together in a panel that explores the intersections of international development and architecture/design to improve access to education in challenged populations around the world.

 

Design in Public’s flagship program, the Seattle Design Festival (SDF) was founded in 2011 to celebrate all the ways that design makes life better for Seattle, and to nurture relationships among designers, citizens, city leaders, and future-thinking business innovators. Now in its 8th year, SDF is the largest design-related event in the Pacific Northwest, gathering 120+ partners and over 30,000 attendees to 80+ citywide events each September.

2018 is the year of TRUST. From September 6-21, the Seattle Design Festival will connect designers, community members and civic leaders to explore how we design for TRUST.

More information here: https://www.designinpublic.org/

Categories
Blog News

Tuesday, August 28 – Building Their Future: How Girls’ Schools in Afghanistan Are Preventing Early Marriage

Please join Sahar Education and Global Washington for a conversation about effective ways to prevent early marriage, including a new boarding school being built by Sahar to help rural families seeking a safer educational option in Afghanistan. Girls from rural areas can be more susceptible to early marriage when they are unable to continue their education as a result of security concerns and economic circumstances.

Who:
Everyone

Where:
Global Washington

When:
August 28, 2018

Time:
Registration starts at 12:00pm
Program: 12:15pm – 1:15pm

Address:
1601 Fifth Ave, Suite 1900
SeattleWA98101

Cost:
Members: $20
Non-Members: $20

REGISTER HERE. 

Speakers:

  • Shogofa, Afghan Fellow, Sahar
  • Ginna Brelsford, Executive Director, Sahar
  • David Miller, Board of Directors, Sahar

Shogofa – Sahar Afghan Fellow

A native of Afghanistan, Shogofa traveled to Seattle from Massachusetts to begin her fellowship with Sahar in July of 2018. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Regis College in Weston, Mass., graduating with honors in 2016. During her time at Regis, Shogofa was a member the Pi Gamma Mu International Honor Society in Social Sciences, was accorded the Mary C. Bryan Award for an essay on women’s rights in Afghanistan, and was named a “Pillars of the Community” honoree.

Shogofa believes that being a woman in Afghanistan is not about being oppressed, weak, and afraid, but rather involves learning what is necessary to become strong. Her desire is to promote the education of women, support their rights, and advocate for gender equality. Shogofa is confident that her passions will be supportive of Sahar’s mission to create real, positive change for the girls and women of Afghanistan.

Ginna Brelsford – Sahar Executive Director

Ginna Brelsford is the Executive Director of Sahar. Ms. Brelsford brings over 20 years of experience in government, business and the non-profit world of international development. Ginna’s commitment to gender equality and access to education began with a focus on literacy in Brazil and spanned two decades of work in Russia, Latin America and Asia.

A former executive director at Pura Vida Coffee Company, Ginna is known for her ability to blend social entrepreneurial innovation with poverty eradication. She has served at the gubernatorial level as well as worked with the Russia America Foundation on a number of USAID projects promoting civil society and economic development.

A strong advocate for women’s empowerment, she authored a book on women leaders in Alaska and toured with Bono to eradicate HIV/AIDS for the One Campaign at World Vision. An explorer of frontiers, Ginna was among the first woman to ski across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska.

Ms. Brelsford’s diverse experiences have led her to the conclusion that education and literacy acquisition are key to poverty eradication. A lack of education is the root of many issues in the developing world, and she feels privileged to direct an organization that helps solve them by giving more girls the opportunity to learn.

David Miller – Sahar Board of Directors, Miller Hull Partnership LLC, UW Professor of Architecture

David is a nationally-recognized architect known for pursuing innovative sustainable and high performance design strategies while responding to each site’s unique conditions. David served in the Peace Corps after graduating from Washington State University which laid the foundation for his interest in housing design. David is a partner at Miller Hull Partnership and the Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington. He is the author of, Toward a New Regionalism, and the chair of the National AIA’s Committee on the Environment. He is the recipient of the Washington State University Alumni Achievement Award and the BetterBricks Designer Award. He currently serves as a board member for Sahar.

Categories
Blog News

Sahar Operations & Campaign Manager Qxhna Titcomb World Champion in Ultimate Frisbee!

Sahar champions women and girls empowerment worldwide. We work with so many people – Afghan women and girls in our programs and schools, our staff in Afghanistan, our Afghan fellow in Seattle, our American staff, as well as all our Sahar supporters themselves. There are many ways to champion change – education and empowerment can happen through many avenues. One of those avenues is sport.

Our Seattle-based Operations and Campaign Manager, Qxhna Titcomb recently won an ultimate frisbee world championship with the Seattle women’s club team, Seattle Riot, at the World Ultimate Club Championships in Cincinnati, OH. Ultimate frisbee is a self-refereed non-contact team sport played on a soccer-sized field, with players passing the frisbee between each other to advance it down the field and catch the disc in the endzone for a point. Qxhna brings a lot of her passion for gender equity from sports and we benefit from her team-first mentality in the office every day.

Congrats, Qxhna!

Categories
Blog News

Sahar Joins Girls Not Brides Global Partnership

We are excited to announce that as a result of our Early Marriage Prevention Program (EMPP) Sahar became a member of Girls Not Brides on June 10, 2018.  “Girls Not Brides is a global partnership of more than 900 civil society organisations from over 95 countries committed to ending child marriage and enabling girls to fulfil their potential.” As part of the group, Sahar now has access to a larger network of change makers working collectively to end child marriage. It is our first international collaboration.

For more information about Girls Not Brides, please check out their website here. For more informatin on their theory of change: “Girls Not Brides integrated the collective expertise of more than 150 member organizations, partners and other experts to develop a collective Theory of Change which maps out the critical strategies to end child marriage and support married girls.”

Categories
Blog News

“Bettering the lives of girls and women doesn’t stop at classrooms to learn in and textbooks to study from”

In my first couple weeks with Sahar, I’ve been tasked with familiarizing myself with Sahar’s work. I’ve come to understand not only Sahar’s mission, but the importance and impact of the work being done. What has stood out to me most about the work so far, beyond educating girls in school, was the focus on educating the community and making an impact inside and outside of the classroom. The fact that the schools being built and refurbished are in partnership Afghan Ministry of Education (MOE), speaks a lot to Sahar’s approach. Providing the financial resources, taking the steps to fast track learning spaces for girls, and training female teachers to assist those girls, Sahar takes what I feel is the appropriate position when it comes to the fulfillment of these schools, allowing them to comply with their own government standards and be operated by the MOE. When it comes to Sahar, bettering the lives of girls and women doesn’t stop at classrooms to learn in and textbooks to study from. Sahar has piloted programs that encourage and support girls to understand their worth, including the Digital Literacy Program (DLP) and the Early Marriage Prevention Program (EMPP), allowing them to gain self esteem and the confidence to take on challenges; in turn, helping to prevent child marriages and supporting women for employment opportunities to support themselves (and their families) financially.

I have spent these first weeks not only getting to know Sahar as an organization, but working on building Sahar’s reach on social media, as well as working on expanding and refining aspects of Sahar’s website. Already, I feel very excited and passionate about the work Sahar is doing, and am excited to be apart of the team this summer! I hope to support the incredible impact that Sahar has made so far, and the impact it will have in the near future, through my own skills and lens as a young adult and high school student.

-Charlotte Gong, Intern

You can change the life of a girl and her community.

Donate Today

Support Us