When the Taliban retook Afghanistan in 2021 and banned formal education for women and girls past sixth grade, 1.1 million school-aged girls lost access to a classroom almost overnight. Most international aid organizations pulled out. Sahar Education stayed.

Sahar began in 2001 as Journey with an Afghan School, founded by Julia Bolz, and became its own standalone organization in 2009. It is based in Seattle, but much of its program leadership and board, including executive director Meetra Alokozay, are Afghan women themselves, carrying out work they know from the inside.

Sahar partners with grassroots organizations already rooted in Afghan communities to build educational access for girls and women, work that has only grown more difficult, and more necessary, since 2021.

Before the ban, Sahar built 18 new girls’ schools and repaired 20 more, developed digital literacy programs, and ran early marriage prevention efforts alongside local partners and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education. Altogether, those programs reached and educated more than 250,000 girls.

After 2021, with schools shut down by militants and formal education for girls made illegal, Sahar rebuilt its model from the ground up rather than close its doors.

Schools Built to Stay Hidden

Sahar now runs underground schools in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, built from scratch in homes and community spaces rather than public buildings. Girls and women learn literacy, sewing, and other skills that would draw attention if taught in the open.

Alongside the underground schools, Sahar runs a set of programs built for the same reality, one where girls need an education that can travel with them and disappear when it has to.

• Underground Schools: Clandestine, community-based classrooms in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif teaching literacy, sewing, and other trade skills.
• Online Education Programs: Remote courses that reach girls and women across Afghanistan, including partnerships that let students enroll in university-level coursework from home.
• Men as Partners in Change: A program for high-school-aged boys covering fatherhood, healthy relationships, and gender equality, so the shift toward equal education reaches beyond the girls in Sahar’s classrooms.

Men as Partners in Change: Teaching Brothers Alongside Sisters

Men as Partners in Change is Sahar’s newest program, built on the idea that a ban aimed at girls can be undercut by the boys around them. High-school-aged boys go through coursework on fatherhood, healthy relationships, and gender equality.

Program participants have reported going home and teaching their sisters what they learned in class, extending Sahar’s reach into households the underground schools can’t always reach directly.

What Comes Next for Sahar’s Students

Sahar tracks its programs closely, and in 2024 recorded a 90.9 percent graduation rate across all of them. Graduates have enrolled in University of California coursework, taken jobs in doctor and dental offices, started home-based tailoring businesses, and turned down early marriages.

That record earned Sahar recognition as the Best Women and Girls Education NPO of 2024 for Afghanistan from Acquisition International, and a finalist spot for the Public Interest Registry’s .ORG Impact Award.

None of it changes the fact that the ban is still in place, and that Sahar’s schools have to keep working around it. Individual donors are what keep those classrooms running while grant funding grows more competitive.

Explore more about their mission and how you can support them here: Sahar Education

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