Day 1: Nasrine Gross, Founder of Kabultec
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Nasrine Gross is an Afghan-American writer and women’s rights activist. She teaches at Kabul University and is the founder and president of the Roqia Center for Women’s Rights, Studies, and Education. During the Taliban era and afterwards, she helped collect over 300,000 signatures worldwide in support of equal rights in the new constitution of Afghanistan. She participated in the Loya Jirga of Afghan Women in Brussels in November 2001. Gross was invited to the transfer of power ceremonies that marked the new Afghanistan in December 2001, the emergency Loya Jirga in 2002, and the constitutional Loya Jirga in 2003. She has organized and participated in numerous conferences and seminars on Afghan women’s rights across the country.
After the fall of the Taliban in 2002, Nasrine came up with a simple, but radical idea: teaching literacy classes in tents and homes in a socially acceptable format – with couples as her students. Since women require their husband's permission or presence to do most things, men are invited to learn to read as well.
Gross now lives nine months of the year in a small village outside Kabul and has graduated nearly 500 students ages 15 to 82. She has also expanded her classes to cover math, health, family issues and political education. In this video, you can hear from this extraordinary woman!
Gross is also the author of four books and many articles. Her publications include: Women’s Guide to Winning in the 2005 Afghan Elections, Memories of the First Girls’ High School in Afghanistan, Steps of Peace and Our Responsibility as Afghans, and Women in the Koran: Dari Translation of Verses in the Koran Regarding Women.
(Biographical Information taken from Encore and Virginia Law)
02 APR 2011