Shabana Basij-Rasikh: The ongoing fight to educate Afghan girls

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode What Leadership Looks Like.

In 2016, Shabana Basij-Rasikh created Afghanistan's School of Leadership for girls. When the Taliban took control in 2021, she helped her students flee and continued their education abroad.

About Shabana Basij-Rasikh

Shabana Basij-Rasikh is the president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan. The school's goal is to provide access to quality education to girls from across Afghanistan. Currently, the school is operating in Rwanda.

Basij-Rasikh was born and raised in Kabul and traveled to the U.S. to finish high school through the State Department's Youth Exchange Studies program. She went on to study at Middlebury College in Vermont, where she was awarded a Davis Peace Prize, which she used to build wells near Kabul. She was selected as one of Glamour Magazine's Top 10 College Women of 2010. More recently, Basij-Rasikh was featured on the Forbes "30 Under 30 Asia" list in 2019, and in 2021, she became a contributing columnist for the Washington Post.

Basij-Rasikh graduated from of Middlebury College with a Bachelor's degree in International Studies and Women & Gender Studies, and earned a Master's in Public Policy at Oxford University.

This segment of TED Radio Hour was produced by Diba Mohtasham and edited by Katie Simon. You can follow us on Twitter @TEDRadioHour and email us at TEDRadio@npr.org.

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