Adeena niazi biography channel

Nine years after she had moved to Canada as a refugee, Adeena Niazi had herself smuggled back into Afghanistan. It was 1997, and the Taliban had banned girls’ education; the former lecturer at Kabul University was determined to help.

Adeena niazi biography channel

She set up underground home-based schools for girls, funding them with income-generating programs for widows in Afghanistan and refugee women in Pakistan, and with help from colleagues at her Toronto-based charity, the Afghan Women’s Organization (AWO).

So successful were the classes that when the regime was defeated, many of the students were able to skip grades in formal schools.

In 2002, the AWO set up an orphanage for girls in Kabul that ran for 19 years—until the Taliban returned this year. Just before the fall of the capital, the girls were moved to safe homes. “I’m extremely worried about them, but at the moment,” she says, “we have no other options.”

Niazi and the AWO are currently working day and night to assist Afghan women, girls, and fam