Challenge
Afghanistan has one of the world’s lowest literacy rates: In total there are 11 million illiterate people in Afghanistan (UNESCO, 2016). Ensuring literacy is vital for the economic development, peace, and the rights of the Afghan people. Despite more than a decade passing and billions of dollars spent, an estimated two-thirds of Afghan girls do not go to school (Human Rights Watch, 2017). The education infrastructure is still faced with a vast number of resource-led barriers, such as: lack of quality educational tools, teachers, venues and learning conditions. (Human Rights Watch, 2017).
Solution
Developing a comprehensive educational infrastructure that tackles all of the resource and security-led barriers mentioned previously, could take decades. An alternative approach is to cut through all of the resource-led barriers and decentralize the access to quality education through our offline EdTech platforms. It is important to note this solution is not supposed to replace public education infrastructure, nor is it intended to replace teachers. It is purely meant to ease access to literacy by complementing the ordinary educational infrastructure. This, in particular until a comprehensive sustainable educational infrastructure has been developed; much like the CBE scheme.
Achievements
- Certificate of appreciation, Afghan Mission to the UN
- Human Rights-award, Amnesty Norway
- Certificate of appreciation, Embassy of Afghanistan in Oslo
- Young Leader of the Year, The Crown Prince of Norway
- Alumni of the month, US Dept. of State
- Outstanding Youth Delegate-Award, Youth Assembly at the United Nations
- Forbes 30 under 30 finalist
” I am a Norwegian-Afghan tech lawyer who was born during the civil war in Afghanistan. As the CEO and founder of Brighter Tomorrow, I have secured the education of more than 2,200 children and youth in Afghanistan. Our social media fundraiser campaigns have reached more than 600 000 users, and more than 10 million readers and viewers in traditional press (HuffPost, El Pais, BBC etc).
With the aim of helping the most marginalized children, I have also developed the first EdTech platform in Afghanistan and installed it at a public school in Kabul with 200 children enrolled in the program. We were enrolled in the Oxford Social Entrepreneurs Program in 2020 and have greatly benefited from this when scaling our solution in Afghanistan.
My advocacy work includes acting as a UN Youth Delegate on several occasions, proposing policies at Norwegian parliamentary hearings, and discussing youth and peacebuilding in panel discussions with former UNSG Ban Ki-Moon and Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova. I have also received a UN award and held a speech in the UN General Assembly Hall in front of 1,600 youth delegates.”
Pamir Ehsas, Founder of Brighter Tomorrow
