Afghan Girls Robotics Team Awarded Silver Medal For 'Courageous Achievement'

Afghan Girls Robotics Team Awarded Silver Medal For 'Courageous Achievement'

On Tuesday July 18, 2017 the Afghan team was awarded a special silver medal for "courageous achievement" at the FIRST Global Challenge. The New York Times added: 

For three days in the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall, where an African-American woman was once denied the right to sing before an integrated audience in the 1930s, the Afghan girls in head scarves were stars on an international stage, with cameras, lights and whispers trailing them from practice to competition.

Visa Decision Reversal Brings Afghan Girls Robotics Team To FIRST Global Robotics Competition

Lida Azizi (left) and Kawsar Roshan in Herat, building a self-driving miniature rickshaw decked with Afghan and American flags. Photograph: Sune Engel Rasmussen

Visa Decision Reversal Brings Afghan Girls Robotics Team To FIRST Global Robotics Competition

In the days of Trump, we are learning to accept small wins and tiny pleasures. Progressive women got a dose of pure delight on Wednesday -- Pakistan's heroic Malala Yousafzai's birthday -- when news broke that the US State Dept had reversed its refusal to grant visas to six Afghan female students to travel to Washington DC for the FIRST Global international robotics competition next week. 

The international backlash against an absurd decision that allowed the team from Iran and five other countries listed by the Trump administration in their disputed Muslim ban to come to the competition while denying visas to the Afghan girls team looked like unadulterated sexism by the Trump administration. Countless individuals and organizations accused Trump -- who is rolling back women's rights in America -- of retreating from America's previous efforts that support the education of young women in Afghanistan. 

Gambia, the only other country to be denied a visa, will also be coming to Washington. 

Heartbroken Afghan Girls Science Team Denied US VISAS For FIRST Global Challenge 2017

Heartbroken Afghan Girls Science Team Denied US VISAS For FIRST Global Challenge 2017

Last week the US Supreme Court temporarily approved parts of Trump's travel ban, preventing visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the US without an approved family connection, employee or student status or other pre-existing relationship. The Court will issue a full ruling when it resumes its caseload in the fall. 

One of the first casualties of the new travel ban are six teenage girls -- an all-girl robotics team of young engineers from Afghanistan -- determined to participate in an international science competition scheduled for mid-July in Washington, DC.

Denied a one-week travel visa to participate in the FIRST Global Challenge, the team has already risked their lives in Afghanistan, travelling twice under the reality of truck bombings to Kabul in April. The Afghan team members are from Towhid, Malakai Jalalai and Hoze Karbas High Schools. The trip from their small town near Herat to Kabul was to complete their visa applications. Nothing about the scientific competition was easy for these young women. Other global competitors received their box of raw materials in March. When their own box was held up amid concerns about terrorism, the young engineers improvised, building their motorized machines from household materials, writes The Washington Post. 

Roya Mahboob, Afghanistan's first female tech CEO and founder of Citadel software, who brought the girls together, told Forbes that the girls "were crying all day." While the exact reason for the visa denial remains confidential, only 112 business travel visa from Afghanistan were granted in May 2017, compared to 780 business travel visas from Iraq and 4,067 from Pakistan.

Angelina Jolie Pitt Working on 'The Breadwinner' & 'First They Killed My Father', A Memoir By Loung Ung

Angelina Jolie Pitt Working on ‘The Breadwinner’ & ‘First They Killed My Father’, A Memoir By Loung Ung

“The Hollywood Reporter shares news that Angelina Jolie Pitt will executive produce the animated film ‘The Breadwinner’, a story of a young girl living as a boy under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.”

“The story’s heroine Parvana disguises herself as a boy to become her family’s breadwinner after her father is imprisoned unfairly. The film, which also focuses on the culture and beauty of Afghanistan, will be produced in English and in Dari.” Read on

Angelina Jolie-Pitt Makes Cambodian Film for Netflix

“Jolie-Pitt is currently working on a film for Netflix called ‘First They Killed My Father’. The actor and director is adapting the memoir of Loung Ung, a Cambodian author and human rights activist, who survived the Khmer Rouge regime. Jolie-Pitt has co-written the screen adaptation with Ung and will product as well as direct the film.”

“Jolie Pitt said she decided to partner with Netflix because of the streaming service’s global reach. “Films like this are hard to watch but important to see,” she said. “They are also hard to get made. Netflix is making this possible, and I am looking forward to working with them and excited that the film will reach so many people.” The film will be released in both Khmer and English.”  Read on

The Skate Girls Of Kabul Are High Flying Into London's Saatchi Gallery In April 2015

The Skate Girls Of Kabul Are High Flying Into London’s Saatchi Gallery In April 2015

Young women make up about 45% of Skateistan’s members. These girls are forbidden to ride bicycles and they must wear restrictive clothing for many sport-related activities.

For these girls, this skateboarding initiative not only gives them the chance to go to school, it also allows them to feel a sense of freedom, strength, and that they have a safe haven away from the dangers that they face on a daily basis. Even with their confining clothes, they are able to successfully skateboard, which would explain why this activity is becoming the nation’s #1 sport for women.

Enter now British photographer Jessica Fulford Dobson, who heard about Skateistan and begged to photograph the liberated, airborn girls.

The Skate Girls of Kabul exhibition opens at London’t Saatchi Gallery from April 15th-28th. Read a wonderful article by Andrea Alessi for Artslant ‘Afghanistan’s Skater Girls Roll Into the Saatchi Gallery’.