Afghanistan To Open It's First School For Girl Coders And Hackers!

Fereshteh Forough's crowdfunding dream has become a reality: a school in Afghanistan dedicated to teaching girls how to code.

As the United States, Europe and Australia innovate to close the gender gap in technology, Fereshteh Forough is determined to level the playing field for Afghanistan.

She is the founder of an organisation called Code to Inspire, and has just successfully raised over 20,000 USD to open the first school in Afghanistan that is dedicated to teaching girls how to code!

The school is about connecting women in Afghanistan to technology, and the rest of the world. It is about educating and empowering women in Afghanistan by teaching them how to code, after which the organisation helps them find employment as programmers. With 22 million mobile users in Afghanistan's population of 30 million, Fereshteh believes this provides the perfect opportunity for students to be challenged to find a problem inside their community, and to build mobile applications as the solution.

With men being the largest consumers of smart phones, she believes the creation of mobile apps by women that are a necessity to the lives of Afghanistan's men will challenge their perceptions about the role and capability of women in technology.

"Our goals are to educate girls and young women in Afghanistan, and economically empower them by helping them find employment so they can apply the skills they have learnt at Code to Inspire."

Code to Inspire is hoping to create a safe and secure place where girls can learn, communicate and enjoy being in an educational environment. It's free of charge for the students, due to the financial situation of families in Afghanistan who normally can not afford to pay for education. Besides providing the educational, technical and social curriculum, Code for Inspire will teach them how to be an effective leader, and increase their self esteem and confidence. The institution will target girls from schools, teaching them basic HTML and CSS to design beautifully, as well as target university students from Computer Science who will learn about mobile technology.

"Every single girl in our lab will also have an opportunity to access education and digital literacy and they will become ambassadors of peace, freedom, creativity and innovation. That is what Code to Inspire is about."

Fereshteh is also the founding member of the Women's Annex Foundation, which educates girls in Afghanistan about technology, and revolutionised salary security for women through payments in bitcoin. They built 11 computer media labs in Afghanistan, connecting 50,000 girls to the internet. Using bitLanders, the girls began blogging and are paid using crypto currency - revolutionising the financial empowerment of women in Afghanistan. Fereshteh has also spoken at TED in New York.

Without confidence, and without support, the Sheryl Sandbergs and Marissa Mayers of Afghanistan have previously been unable to 'lean in'. But despite dealing with statistics and a social reality with all odds against her, Fereshteh is planning to tackle the nation's social structures head on in an attempt to empower women through technology.