Push Play to hear how one woman, Hassina Sherjan, is helping prevent terrorism in Afghanistan through education and creating jobs.
Both men and women, girls and boys are being educated in Afghanistan by Hassina Sherjan and the 19 schools she has built since 1999. After 3 generations of conflict, Afghanistan’s literacy rate is less than 10% contributing to the desperation that fuels terrorism. Without jobs and education to provide hope for work, the terrorists find prey for recruiting.
The current Afghanistan government has laws that still prevent people over 10 years old from joining school, and due to the war in Afghanistan many have not had access. It’s important to educate males equally with the women in order to prevent bitterness and lessen the impact of terrorist recruiters for the war.
Hassina is also working to provide jobs through her home decor business that preserves the traditional Afghan art of embroidery. Boumi.com is a social enterprise that creates employment and learning opportunities for its employees – women, refugees, widows, and men. The experts within Boumi are highly trained Afghans, skilled and experienced in design, sourcing, production, operations, quality control, shipping and marketing.
Through a collaboration with Butterfly Works in Holland, Hassina has also started CraftingPeace.com, elegantly embroidered birds of peace. The intent is for both Boumi and Crafting Peace is to grow the business to include cotton production and manufacture internationally distributed products.
If you live on or close to the Central Coast of California, meet Hassina at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art trunk show in the museum store on October 27 from noon to 5 pm. Buy her Birds of Peace to help her continue to provide education and jobs to fight terrorism and build Afghanistan’s recovery from decades of war.
Hassina is looking for support in design, cotton weaving and production, expansion of sales channels, manufacturing and more. Watch the video below and listen to the audio above to hear more detail and learn more about the conflict, terrorism, education and business in Afghanistan.
