Afghan Girls Financial Assistance Fund Inc

Programs: Since 2008, agfaf has leveraged over $8 million (value of tuition, room and board received from schools) to help fund 41 students' college and high school educations at us institutions including bucknell university, drew university, hollins university, lafayette college, mount holyoke college, wagner college, washington & lee university, yale university, and american university of central asia. Agfaf empowers the young scholars in our program with education that will support their commitment to become the agents for gender, social and economic progress and equality in afghanistan. Through a competitive, annual selection process in the united states and afghanistan, agfaf identifies qualified afghan students and helps match them to colleges. Agfaf helps to secure full tuition, room and board at very competitive colleges and universities. Agfaf then covers additional costs that the student and their family are unable to afford such as books, health insurance, travel, phone and computers. For the duration of their stay in the united states, agfaf identifies host families, who provide agfaf beneficiaries with a home during academic breaks, emotional support throughout the process, and contributes to their expenses. Finally, agfaf funds roundtrip travel to and from afghanistan during the summer to ensure they remain connected to their culture and families while gaining professional experience with internships and summer jobs. Through our recently launched impact project program, agfaf provides small grants to our students for creating self-sustaining projects in afghanistan. Fortified by board members mentoring, several students have taken their projects from proposal to implementation. To date, three students established three libraries at local schools in kabul. As libraries are generally not a part of public schools in afghanistan, all three of these libraries provide previously unavailable resources to hundreds of students every day. In addition to serving the schools in which they were established, the andeshagah library, the armaan braille library (the first braille library in afghanistan) and the baale parwaz library provide the surrounding communities programs in adult literacy, self-defense, and art. Through these projects, our students are already creating positive change in afghanistan.