Sahar Education

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!

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.”

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

We are so thankful for the Skyline High School and  Issaquah High School students who raised $1,500 for Sahar’s Digital Literacy program. It is inspiring to see American students supporting Afghan students – the global citizenry demonstrated by these high school students is the change we need in the world. Thank you to the supporters, donors, and the businesses which collaborated with We Care Club to make the charitable banquet a huge success!

We’ve had a Banner Spring at Sahar! Here’s a couple of exciting updates:

Seattle 4 International Rotary Grant:
We’ve received a $8,000 grant from one of the world’s largest Rotary clubs for the Sahar Boarding School Kitchen and Cafeteria Build-out. Seattle 4 has been a long-standing supporter of Sahar and we appreciate their deep commitment to global women’s empowerment.

Causality Brand Grant:
We’ve received a matching grant from Causality to design dynamic and sustainable communication elements for our public boarding school for rural Afghan girls. This grant will be a key component to our success – it will allow us to communicate about our work more effectively!

Churchwomen of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church Grant:
The Churchwomen of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church have supported Sahar with a $4,800 grant. This grant provides transportation for 100 Afghan girls to travel to a teacher training center. The lack of teachers is a significant problem in Afghanistan where the school system has been flooded by students since the fall of Taliban rule. Custom dictates that girls must be taught by women beginning in middle school and women teachers are especially in need. We fund teachers’ transportation from their villages into urban teacher training centers, allowing the women to receive certification. Training these teachers effectively sustains programs for girls’ education in rural areas.

This 2018 spring has been a dynamic time for Sahar. We appreciate all of the support from our donors! Thank you!