empowerED Afghanistan

EmpowerED Afghanistan is a website open for general audience aim to introduce the education accessibility problem in Afghanistan, comparing the educational status of females before and after Taliban limitations, and transferring the Afghan girls stories to the world.

Why ? Education is an essential right as it contributes to one's standard of living, health, [ability] to participate in the community, challenge equality before the law and other fundamental freedoms. “Denying [education] to half the population effectively denies women and girls most other human rights” The country worked on rebuilding their education system after the initial ban between 1996 and 2001 due to the Taliban rule. However, there was another ban in 2021. The drop of education after the rule of the Taliban is startling as well as the loss of teaching staff, access to education, and increasing gender disparity

Who? International Organizations and NGOs: International organizations and NGOs working in Afghanistan, such as UNICEF, UNESCO, can benefit from the project’s findings to design targeted programs and interventions that address the specific challenges faced by the education system in Afghanistan.

Funding Agencies: Funding Agencies looking to support educational initiatives in Afghanistan can make informed decisions based on the project’s findings.

General Public: Our project can increase awareness about the challenges faced by the education system in Afghanistan and the importance of addressing them to promote equal educational opportunities for all.

What? Our website is focusing on the comparison of the Educational status and accessibility of education before and after Taliban banning girls from attending secondary schools and higher education facilities. It consists of some data visualisations representing : Comparison between the increasing in youth literacy rates from 1975 to 2021, and the shrinking of the rates from 2021 to 2023 Map comparison between locations of schools and females population in the same area Comparing the Ratio of Female to Male Secondary School Enrollment Indicating the decrease in educational facilities and teachers’ numbers Government expenditure on education before and after 2020 Accompanied with stories of young females under the circumstances of the educational crisis

Problem Statement: Currently, 80% (2.5 Million) of school-aged Afghan girls and young women do not have access to education because of the Taliban banning girls from secondary school. After decades of rebuilding from the original Taliban takeover in 1996-2001, Afghanistan is going back to the dreadful past.

Process: 1) Meet the team!! Combine Interests Research different topics Look at different datasets

2) Finalize Topic and Datasets Practice creating visualizations Started creating website with Weebly

3) Found a new data set Created google collab visualizations Worked on Website

4) Established a color theme and changed colors of visualizations Added visualizations on website

GROWS: We originally did not know how to use weebly.com to make our website so that took some time to figure out It was difficult finding a data set because we had 10 possibilities before but we were not able to use them There was so much to do, so splitting up the work effectively in the first few days was hard.

GLOWS: We all had different strengths within Python, Looker Studio and Weebly.com so we were able to hone them well and make a great MVP! We found a dataset that communicated our ideas We bonded well as a team and worked great together! Creating maps in looker studio and separating the different genders in our data set was a big accomplishment!

Future Implications: More research to understand the meaning behind our data Add data about population statistics and about rural/urban communities Observe other factors such as fertility rates, employment that resulted from limited access to education Include more personal stories of Afghan women and maybe even interview them in the future!

Note: 3 other student worked on this international project, but they didn't join the hackathon.

Video link : https://www.loom.com/share/a62441f0a7f842a4965446cd9394bcd3?sid=1e12b105-4b47-4cb3-943c-5328734365f3