Our Mission
Our mission is, and always has been, to educate Afghan girls. Our vision is of a generation of compassionate and confident Afghan women with the leadership skills to rebuild Afghanistan and guide their homeland into a better future.
Our Programs
SOLA operates two distinct programs: in-person education for Afghan girls at our flagship boarding school, and our online initiative, SOLAx, which reaches tens of thousands of Afghan students worldwide, many of them girls who are actively denied the right to attend school.
SOLA Rwanda
Our boarding school, founded in Afghanistan and re-established in Rwanda in 2021 following the return of the Taliban, stands alone as the world's first & only boarding school for Afghan girls. Here, we educate the next generation of Afghan female leaders while fostering a supportive sisterhood among our diverse and vibrant student body.
SOLA evacuated Kabul upon the Taliban's return in 2021, resuming boarding school operations in Rwanda. Here, we continue to do what no one else does: we draw Afghan girls to us from around the world, providing a rigorous education promoting critical thinking, a sense of purpose, and respect for self and others.
SOLA is the place where Afghan girls can grow to become compassionate, curious, confident women. At SOLA, they stand as leaders of the generation who will one day lead a peaceful and united Afghanistan.
SOLAx
SOLAx is the only online platform to bring culturally relevant & accessible education directly into the palm of an Afghan girl's hand, using only WhatsApp and a cellphone to create access to education for students in even the most remote and low-bandwidth corners of Afghanistan and throughout the global Afghan diaspora.
Our students are Afghan girls who come to SOLA from every corner of the world. Yet, with thousands of applications received for just a few dozen spaces yearly, we know we can never fully accommodate the need for education at our physical campus alone.
That's why, in 2024, we launched SOLAx: our online academy where students only need a smartphone and basic internet to access daily coursework from their own homes, all using WhatsApp, all completely free and accessible to everyone, no application needed.
To every Afghan girl and every Afghan family everywhere: join us. We built SOLAx for you.
In 2026, it is illegal for girls in Afghanistan to attend school past 6th grade.
We will not look away.
In Afghanistan in 2021, the number of girls attending secondary school was 1.1 million.
In Afghanistan in 2026, the number of girls attending secondary school is 0.
The Taliban have made Afghanistan the only nation on Earth to bar half of its population from receiving an education. Our founder Shabana Basij-Rasikh has urged the world not to look away, and has spoken and written extensively on the bravery of Afghan women and girls: click the buttons below to read her blog, to watch videos and listen to podcasts, and to visit her author page at The Washington Post where she is a contributing columnist.
We are not silent. We will never look away.
