Home-Schooling

Still, many of the girls continue to show up, encouraged by mothers, sisters and cousins who never had any chance to learn basic reading and writing themselves. In the aftermath of the tent burning, the girls studied in the shade for the next month, taking frequent breaks to drink from a nearby stream. "In 2005 things weren't that bad. People were much more hopeful about the future," explains Shirin Sahani, 33, then a graduate student from Georgetown who visited the Godah school postfire while she interned with the Oruj Learning Center.

For Saleem, seeing the girls wash off the charred chairs and search through the ashes for usable supplies reminded her why she had worked to set up the school in the first place. "Bringing education to girls was based on the needs I witnessed, not a drive to bring about social change," she says.

It hasn't been easy. Saleem remembers sitting with Godah community members three years before the fire, trying to persuade them to educate their daughters. Though many families had resisted the idea, she had two advantages: the support of her father, a respected elder in the community, and her own educational background. Saleem's early education at an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan and later at a Pakistani private college had equipped her with the skills that would make her good money as a tutor.

But it is her religious faith that is her best weapon in trying to convince reluctant parents that the education of girls is sanctioned by the Qur'an. "The first word revealed to the Prophet is iqra: read," she says as part of her argument. "By educating girls you are honoring God. It's right there in the Qur'an." She attributes her drive to make these schools succeed to her deep religious faith too. "I believe from my religion that if you have good intentions and keep it up, the time will come to do your good deed."

At the Godah school most students cluster for three hours a day, every day but Friday, learning to read, write and do math, and studying geography and the Islamic texts—standard curriculum in Afghanistan. The oldest students, fifth and sixth graders, also take on biology and history. Though it would be more culturally accepted to have female teachers for Godah's older students, the Oruj Learning Center continues to employ mostly men since literate, educated women are hard to find in Afghanistan.

Despite all the hurdles, the students and their teachers continue to come. Even though the schools are now registered with the Afghanistan Ministry of Education, Saleem's international donors (whose funds are often funneled through the Washington, D.C.-based Advocacy Project) foot the bill for most of the teachers' salaries, and the school continues to recycle many old school supplies while waiting on new ones from the government. Saleem hopes to be able to hand her current crop of schools over to the government and move on to founding new ones, but for now she thinks she needs to continue her work there. "If I leave, I don't see anyone else who will step up," she says.