Our Founder
Shabana Basij-Rasikh
Raised in Kabul during the Taliban’s first regime, Shabana has dedicated her entire adult life to educating Afghan girls.
early years in kabul
Shabana was 6 years old when the Taliban seized power in 1996. Under their regime, women could travel outside the home only while wearing the burqa and when accompanied by a male chaperone, and girls were completely forbidden from attending school.
Yet in cities and villages across Afghanistan, secret schools began to open. Often located in the living rooms of private homes, these schools were run by women and were open to girls whose families were ready to risk fierce retribution at the hands of the Taliban for educating their daughters.
Shabana’s family was among those ready, and Shabana and her older sister attended several of these secret schools in Kabul. Shabana’s sister was of an age where she could not be out in public without a burqa and a male chaperone – so Shabana dressed as a boy and accompanied her sister to these secret schools, both of them hiding their schoolbooks in shopping bags and varying their daily routines so as not to draw suspicion from the Taliban.
The regime’s fall in 2001 allowed girls to return to school openly in Afghanistan, and Shabana later attended a year of high school in the U.S. through the State Department's Youth Exchange Studies program before enrolling at Middlebury College in Vermont.
The creation of sola
It was in 2008, as a student at Middlebury, that Shabana co-founded SOLA with the mission of providing access to quality education for girls across her homeland. SOLA remained a priority throughout her college years, and became her lifelong commitment upon graduating Middlebury magna cum laude in 2011 with a degree in International Studies and Women & Gender Studies. Shabana has since earned a Master in Public Policy degree from Oxford University and has received honorary doctorates from SOAS University of London (2016) and Cedar Crest College in Pennsylvania (2019).
At Middlebury, Shabana was awarded a Davis Peace Prize with which she built wells outside of Kabul; was selected as one of Glamour Magazine's Top 10 College Women of 2010; and received the Vermont Campus Compact 2011 Madeline Kunin Public Service Award for leadership and service to others.
In 2014, Shabana was named one of CNN International's Leading Women and one of National Geographic's Emerging Explorers. She is a global ambassador for Girl Rising, a call to action seeking investment in girls' education worldwide.
In 2018, Shabana was awarded the Malalai Medal, one of Afghanistan's highest national honors, for her work in promoting girls' access to education. In 2019, she was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the social entrepreneurship sector; in 2021, The Washington Post named her a contributor to their Global Opinions section; and in 2023, she received the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year award from the National Geographic Society.
Click here for a selection of videos from Shabana's public events, including her TED talks in 2012 and in 2021.
While Shabana enjoys speaking to groups about SOLA, she is unable to meet every request. For more information, please contact: president@sola-afghanistan.org
departing afghanistan, and the future
In August 2021, days after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, Shabana led the evacuation of the SOLA community from Afghanistan to Rwanda. This is where SOLA has re-established its operations and now exists as the only boarding school for Afghan girls operating on Earth.
Under the Taliban’s rule, Afghanistan in 2023 has once again become as it was during Shabana’s youth, with women’s rights profoundly restricted and girls forbidden from completing their educations. Shabana’s commitment is to the girls of Afghanistan, girls still in their homeland and girls scattered in the worldwide diaspora, and she is driven to make SOLA a place of hope and promise — a place where Afghan girls will always be free to learn.
"My father would say, 'You can lose everything you own in your life. Your money can be stolen. But the one thing that will always remain with you is what is in here.' And he would point to his head. 'Your education is the biggest investment in your life,' he would say. 'Don't ever regret it.'"
–Shabana Basij-Rasikh