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| Marilyn and Zari |
It
has been my life mission and work to start schools. The most long lasting of
all the schools I’ve started is the Laurel Springs School. It began in 1991,
with 72 students, and it was the first time that there was an online home-schooling
option in the US. There was a need for alternative education that was
personalized and allowed children to express their feelings and become great
citizens in the future. There weren’t many schools in the US that offered that
opportunity for children.
In
1994, following a massive earthquake in Los Angeles, many libraries and schools
were closed. Students were interrupted in completing their critical thinking
and research assignments. They needed to have the right resources to support
their endeavors, and with the libraries closed, it was difficult to access
information. We decided to search online
for information. We found 50,000 links giving information justabout the topic
of Romania. We were excited and thought, “Online education -- what a great
idea!” We had no idea that this was the beginning of a new wave in education –
we were just trying to respondto a need. We made it into the news media, and a
lot of people started talking about what we had pioneered – online education.Today,
Laurel Springs enrolls about 4,900 children a year. We have established
ourselves as the primary education program for children who want to find their
inner strengths, learn creatively, and learn at their own pace.
We wanted students
to have an educational program that would help them explore their powers and
dreams. The school has done very well, and it has constantly explored and
created different learning environments for children.
My
daughter, Ramaa Mosley, is a filmmaker. She did a documentary for a group
called Girl Rising, where they told the stories of nine girls seeking an education.
She filmed a piece on a girl from Afghanistan who was married at the age of eleven
and had a baby at twelve. While Ramaa was editing the film, it was too hard for
me to watch it. I realised that the solution was to educate these girls. I
spoke to Ramaa, and she connected me with her writer, Zarghuna (Zari) Kargar,
who was in New York City for the premiere of the film. I told Zari that I
wanted to help but that that reaching girls in Afghanistan was beyond my experience.
She told me that as long as we found a way to feed a family, they wouldn’t marry
off their daughters. The familieswere simply not able to afford a meal. Zari
suggested that we could give a family on a stipend in exchange for educating
their daughters and not marrying them off. We had two BBC reporters helping us,
who continue tothis very day. They helped us find families in dire need who
would agree to send their children to school. We soon came to learn that the people
of greatest need were the widows whose husbands had been killed in the war.
Through her work, Zari knew quite a lot of women who were struggling to survive.
This
became a great grass-roots program. In the beginning, we delivered food to the
families because the women were not allowed to go to the market. As they became
more confident, they began going to the market. We always gave the money to the
women to empower them.The men are often unwell or addicted to drugs – but when
these women receive the money, they become the ones in charge of the family,
and they themselves go to the market. They change and become more confident,
and their husbands respect them. It has been a very successful program
throughout, and all the children in the families we work with are in school.
There have been no drop-outs, and also no early marriages.
In our work so far, there have been two forms of
resistance. In the beginning there were some fathers who refused to let their daughters participate in the program. There was one girl whose brother strapped a bomb to here that was meant to be detonated in the market place. The girl went to the police who promised to take care of her, but they sent her back home to her family. Zari intervened, but three months later, the girl had disappeared. There was no way to find out where she was, and no trace of her. Her brother was with the Taliban, so she may have been married off. We felt terrible – we did all that we could from a distance. The only way is to deal with such challenges is by staying focused on the families we help. That keeps us going. We watch the children grow – it’s also a beautiful thing to see them gain weight and get healthier – and we send them notes of encouragement. The need is so tremendous, and we’ve had to stay focused.
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| Zeba, studying with F4S' colleague from BBC |
Most
families that we work with are in Kabul, so we can make it a point to see them
each month. But there are some outside of Kabul in areas where the Taliban are
stronger. Working with families there is tougher. It is a huge learning
experience to find such levels of inequality and girls being hurt in such
extreme ways. We must make it relevant to their culture, and so we empower our
colleagues who work in Afghanistan. We send the families messages and photos
and let them know that we are thinking of them.
When I look at the journey so far, there are
some very empowering stories of success. For instance, there was a lovely young
mother who was twenty-six, and her husband had been killed in war. Her family
wanted her to marry one of her husband’s brothers, but she didn’t – and it’s fortunate
they didn’t drive her out of the house. But she lived in a secluded and
provincial environment. She wore a burkha and was very shy. We began bringing
her food a few times. Once, she took off her burkha when we visited. The next
time, she waited for us and greeted us outside the house. The time after that,
she accompanied our team to the market. Then, she began going to the market
herself. Recently, she’s been making a few trips to the bank by herself. There
is such a difference now, and the children are much happier, too. One donor
offered her more money, but she refused, saying that someone else deserved to
benefit from it.  |
| Saara and her little one, from Mazhar |
In
another family, there were two young girls, orphans. One was 17 and the other
7. We gave them a houseand food and helpedthem to go to school. Now they’ve
rented out a part of their house so they can afford an education and save
money. They feel like they have a chance to really grow, and they feel much
safer. In another distant province,there was a family where the parents were
deaf. The daughters risked their lives and travelled to Kabul to reach us. That
they made this dangerous journey itself proved how badly they wanted to do
this. They started their own school, and now the girls at their school meet
every day. They did it despite how dangerous it was. I can’t imagine how
it must have been for the parents.
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| Saara's kids now. |
Looking
ahead, I want to continue expanding the program. One way to do this is to put
more staff on the ground. We now have a waiting list of families. We would also
love for people to write letters of support, send a donation to Food4School.org
and tell their friends about us. We
could make such a big difference, and the solidarity truly matters. We want to
let our girls know that other girls care about them.