WASHINGTON, May 6 (OneWorld.net) - Sadiqa Basiri Saleem's efforts to educate girls in her native Afghanistan -- originally informal classes for 36 girls in an abandoned mosque -- have grown to a network of six schools with 2,870 pupils.
"After the fall of the Taliban in 2002, Sadiqa Basiri Saleem returned home from a refugee camp in Pakistan to find 150,000 girls in her eastern Afghanistan province lacking the resources, security, and support to go to school," writes Vital Voices, a women's organization that awarded Basiri Saleem for her work earlier this year. "Sadiqa and three other women pooled their money together and founded the Oruj Learning Center, which provided uniforms, supplies, and funding for 36 girls to study in an abandoned mosque." Today, Oruj sponsors the education of more than 2,700 girls in six schools and 200 women at four literacy centers in Basiri's home province of Wardak. The Center also runs courses for gifted students and a program for preventing domestic violence that serves 14,000 Afghan women, trains government officials, and "encourages spiritual leaders to discuss women's issues constructively," notes Vital Voices.
In addition to receiving the Vital Voices Rising Voices Award, Basiri Saleem was honored last month with the Samuel Huntington Public Service Award. The award grants a $10,000 stipend to a graduating college senior -- Basiri Saleem is currently finishing her undergraduate work in Massachusetts -- to engage in public service anywhere in the world before continuing on to pursue a graduate degree.
Literacy rates in Afghanistan are alarmingly low: 12.6 percent for females, 43.1 percent for males, and 28.1 percent nationwide. A major factor contributing to the low literacy rates is pervasive violence due to over two decades of war. "The insurgents' anti-education activities -- armed attacks, intimidation and negative propaganda -- seek to shut down schools and deny students -- girls and boys -- a formal education that mixes modern scientific subjects with Islamic studies," reports the humanitarian news agency IRIN. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), there were 256 school-related security incidents and 30 deaths in the first 10 months of 2008, notes IRIN.
