Neighborly Chat: Pashtana Durrani + LEARN Afghanistan
June 16, 2021 @ 9:30AM — 10:45AM Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Join our Neighborly Chat with community development expert Pashtana Durrani and hear about her work as an advocate for girls' education with LEARN Afghanistan. After registering for this event, you will get an email with a Zoom link. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Neighborly Chats are free to attend. Participants are invited to make a donation when registering for tickets, however. All contributions received through this event will directly support our Community Engagement Fellowship fund, enabling a member of our client communities to join ReEstablish Richmond's team as a Fellow starting this fall. Every dollar of your donation will be focused on fostering this unique space for equity, inclusion, and belonging in Richmond.
Virginia has welcomed 8,097 Afghans since 2016. As a local nonprofit, we support many Special Immigrant Visa holders and refugees from Afghanistan who have resettled in the greater Richmond area. In fact, Afghans make up 40% of ReEstablish Richmond's client population. We've designed our programs so that our newest neighbors can connect to resources like English tutoring with self-sufficiency and community in mind. Thousands of miles away in Kandahar, Pashtana Durrani has been advocating for a similar cause -- girls' education and empowerment -- since she was just 7 years old!
Durrani's activism culminated in co-founding LEARN Afghanistan, a grassroots nonprofit based in Kandahar, which has one of the lowest literacy rates in the country. The programs of LEARN Afghanistan are focused on empowering women and youth through digital literacy and e-learning at community schools. Pashtana received the Malala Fund Education champion award and the New Voices Fellowship on sexual and reproductive healthcare from the Aspen Institute. She is also a representative member of the Youth Task Force of Amnesty International. To hear more about community schools and Pashtana's impact, register to attend this Neighborly Chat.
What is a Neighborly Chat? Active participants in ReEstablish Richmond's Volunteer Engagement program started a monthly Zoom meeting when the world was reeling from the early stages of what would later become a devastating global pandemic. While we prioritized safety and took all of our programs online, we did not want this shift to be at the expense of community. This is how our Neighborly Chats started!
Your donation will deepen our clients' sense of community and belonging in Richmond through the Community Engagement Fellowship.
To learn more about what we do, visit our website at reestablishrichmond.org.