In December 2022, the Taliban barred women from attending institutions of higher learning such as universities in Afghanistan. A group of volunteers who cared deeply about preserving access to education for Afghan women responded by creating Afghan Female Student Outreach (AFSO). AFSO brings together volunteer professors and teaching assistants from around the world to provide on-line university-level education to Afghan women to help them continue building academic and professional futures despite the restrictions imposed on them. Today, AFSO serves more than 800 students and offers around 50 academic courses per semester. Among the volunteers helping to carry that work forward are more than a dozen students in the University of Toronto’s program in Ethics, Society and Law (“E, S, AND L”). Hosted by Trinity College, ES&L has a high-achieving cohort of students from every college on the St. George campus.
Seeing an opportunity for ES&L students both to contribute to a significant international social justice initiative, and to benefit in a unique community engaged learning setting, Professor John Duncan, director of ES&L and a volunteer professor with AFSO, invited students in the program to volunteer as AFSO teaching assistants. Interest was immediate and enthusiastic. ES&L students have gone on to support courses ranging from mathematics, economics and data science to literature, philosophy and entrepreneurship.
As teaching assistants, ES&L students take attendance, grade assignments, answer student questions, provide feedback, hold office hours, help navigate course materials and technology, and support professors with the day-to-day work of running their classes. For many, the experience has changed how they think about education itself.
Ankitha Uppalapati, who was recently the teaching assistant for a course on data science with Python, began the course thinking of a computer as “nothing more than a piece of machinery,” “a means to an end for my education.” Her students changed that, revealing it as “an object of infinite opportunities.” In the context of their education, “the computer was not merely to be used, it was weaponized to realize the endless possibilities under circumstances of delimitation.” By the end of the course, she and the professor “took time to reflect on how privileged and grateful we were to teach such a determined group… who were motivated by their own circumstances to learn something we are so privileged to access with ease.”
For other volunteers, the experience has offered the chance to learn from perspectives very different from their own. Grace Smith, now at U of T Law, was a teaching assistant for a literature course centred on Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist, where discussions touched on science, religion, sexuality, family dynamics and other complex themes. “It can be easy to fall into the trap of only considering one’s own limited point of view,” she noted. “But hearing students incorporate stories about their lives and homes into their interpretation of the book was extremely rewarding.”
Gabrielle Bridi, who was a teaching assistant for a course on medical chemistry, highlighted the connections AFSO can foster alongside its academic work. After hearing students speak about their experiences in Afghanistan, their fight to continue their education, and their aspirations, she came to see “the drive to connect with others” as “an underlying theme of AFSO as an international collective.”
One volunteer’s experience extended beyond the classroom. Laraib Khan, who supported an English-language course, helped students write scholarship applications and enter storytelling competitions. She described the most rewarding aspect of AFSO as being able to “equip Afghan women with confidence and independence through learning.” She also had the opportunity to publish research about the program with the course professor, Dr. Julie Mughal of Fairfield University.
For ES&L students, AFSO offers a concrete way to support Afghan women who continue to pursue their education even as so many doors have been closed to them. As one student told an ES&L volunteer, it can feel as though the world has forgotten the women of Afghanistan, but she was glad AFSO had not. The ongoing contribution of ES&L students is part of an important effort to keep education within the reach of Afghan women who are determined to keep learning.
Madelyn Bardell is a senior U of T student majoring in both Ethics, Society, and Law and Economics, an Ethics, Society, and Law work-study student, and an AFSO teaching assistant.
