January 2017—Najila Danishjo is only 20 years old but is fully committed to helping the women of her country. The young teacher has fought furiously to arrive at where she is today.

Danishjo is among 30 carefully vetted instructors who will be teaching innovative leadership and life skills to young female high school students in Afghanistan. But first she will participate in a USAID program to train teachers to instill the students with the skills and self-confidence necessary to take their place among Afghanistan’s next generation of community, private and public sector leaders.

Under USAID’s Promote Women’s Leadership Development program, these students will attend a three-month Royesh (“seedling” in Dari and Pashto) program, which is designed to graduate 7,000 young women by the time it wraps up in 2019. The first of its kind in Afghanistan, the program has been endorsed by the Ministry of Education and will be offered in 30 schools in five target cities in Afghanistan.

Instructors in the Royesh program, which was launched in 2016, attend a six-week pre-service delivery program to introduce them to the curriculum and problem-solving techniques.

Like many of the students Danishjo will soon teach, she had to overcome many obstacles to obtain an education in the first place. Chief among these was poverty and the censure of family and neighbors. Not only is she the only one among her 13 siblings to graduate from university, but she is the only person from her entire village ever to attend a post-secondary institution.

“Everything we do requires permission,” says Danishjo. “Permission from our fathers, our brothers, our uncles, cousins and even sons. I can quite honestly say that the only problems I face are because I am a woman.”

Danishjo’s long-term goal is to return to her village and instruct her own people in what she has learned. “In my village, it is ignorance that creates so many problems,” she says. “When women become aware of their rights, everything will change. And maybe, one day, Afghanistan will be peaceful again.”

The Promote Women’s Leadership Development program runs from 2014 to 2019. More than 2,600 students have graduated to date from its Jawana (sapling) component for women aged 18-30.

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