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Guest Column: Build a future in Afghanistan for peace, access to schools
by Rezadad Mohammadi · Op-Ed · June 08, 2017
Editor’s note: Rezadad Mohammadi finished his senior year at Scattergood Friends School last month. He is this year’s recipient of the Friends Church Peace Scholarship. What follows is his winning essay.
I am Rezadad from Ghazni, Afghanistan. I arrived in 2015 as a junior at Scattergood.
I chose Scattergood because of its well-known spirit of cooperation. At Scattergood, I contributed in different volunteer works to promote peace. I have participated in different lobbying programs such as FCNL (Friends Committee on National Legislation) and lobbied against Mass Incarceration. I also spent a week’s journey in Washington, D.C. and New York to lobby about immigration policy and reform with different organizations, like the Afghanistan Embassy in D.C., FCNL, Riverside Church, and the ambassador of Mexico to the United Nations. I am part of the diversity program to be hosted at Scattergood for private schools on April 14th.
Besides all those, I started the Youth Mirror Association in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2015. It is a non-profit association that helps kids and youth who have been deprived of reading and writing and cannot go to school because of financial issues. In my association there are twenty high school students. Members of our group include alums of the American Alumni Council (AAC). By using funds we received from the AAC in 2015 ($37 USD), we celebrated the International Day of Women and invited various politicians from Kabul to share the message of peace for the rights of women.
In 2015-2016 we collected $149 USD from our charity box. The money was from our members’ pockets, but people also made their own contributions. Using that money we launched three programs in order to bring people together.
Poem Night: We created this program because we wanted to promote the culture of reading poems. The poems were in two languages, Pashto and Farsi. We gathered thirty students from different races in Afghanistan: Hazara, Pashtum, and Tajik. Our main focus was to emphasize how to enrich our literature.
Clothing Distributions: There are a lot of street kids who need clothes for the cold weather in Kabul. We ran a clothing distribution project in our area. We went door to door and asked people to give us the clothes they did not need. As we collected enough clothes, we started to distribute them to people in need. We want to help our community help each other.
Painting Exhibition: We launched this program to help families and kids understand the ideas of genderism, sexism, and racism. We taught them that all humans are equal in their rights. Additionally, we held art and clothes shows in order to familiarize people with the different cultures of Afghanistan. Through this program, we enrolled three street kids in elementary schools and educational centers for free.
I believe these efforts are the beginning of a great change in the future of Afghanistan. We gather people to understand their differences and to spread the message of peace. Through holding these kinds of seminars, we teach them to be the change they want to see in Afghanistan. Every day when I look back and see the smiling faces of these street kids, I feel joy and peace in my life. It makes me stronger and more hopeful for a brighter future in Afghanistan. I plan to continue my education at Graceland University, if I receive enough financial aid from them.
This summer, I would like to go back to Afghanistan to meet with my association to plan more programs for the future. I also want to continue my volunteer work in Afghan Red Crescent Society and in teaching English to Afghan students. I would like to help build a future in Afghanistan in which all children can live in peace and have access to education.
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