By Anastasia Simonenko, arts, culture and sports reporter
The expansion of the “She Leads Tomorrow” volunteer program is making an impact for Afghan women seeking education.
Every year, Virginia Tech’s Center for Refugee and Migrant Displacement Studies offers a variety of volunteer programs that connect students with refugees across the globe, from Kenya to the Middle East to Southwest Virginia.
One of these programs focuses on providing equal educational opportunities to women from Afghanistan, a country where girls are banned from attending secondary school.
Tech students develop direct relationships with mentees by helping them apply to college, prepare for interviews and put together resumes.
Virginia Tech junior Abigail Lee has helped pilot the program since it first came to campus last year. This year, alongside her fellow student leaders, Lee has worked to expand the program by recruiting more volunteers and giving more women a chance to receive support.
In an interview about her experience leading the program, Lee shared how she got involved, the impact she has seen from the work and how growing the program will open more doors.
Her comments were slightly edited for length and clarity.
Abigail Lee, student leader with “She Leads Tomorrow,” meeting with representatives of the Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies at Virginia Tech.
How did you first get involved with the program?
At the beginning of last school year, I got an email from the Center for Refugee and Migrant Displacement Studies (CRMDS). They had a few volunteer opportunities to help the local refugee population.
One of them stood out to me, which was “She Leads Tomorrow,” which was aimed at helping Afghan women pursue education. I had known that there’s a lot of oppression in Afghanistan and barriers to women pursuing their education.
I think it’s just always been a topic that I was passionate about. I care a lot about access to education because my mom is a teacher and my brother was a teacher. Access to education equally across the world is very important to me, as is equality across genders.
I didn’t really know much about what it was going to be about or what my role was going to be before I started.
Since it was the first year of the organization, I really played a larger role than I expected. I had to help get other volunteers or help make the curriculum, and I ended up having about 20 mentees.
What is different about this year’s program structure?
Last year, we had three mentors with about 20 mentees each, and we just thought that was pretty overwhelming for all of us. I think meeting with 20 students one-on-one is a lot.
This year, we were able to recruit a lot of new volunteers from GobblerFest, and we have about a dozen volunteers joining us, which will be great. So how we’re going to restructure it is two other program leaders and I are going to lead a large class session every week.
So all the mentees are going to get a class session each week, and then each mentor will have about three to five mentees instead of 20, and they’ll be able to meet with them one-on-one, so it’ll be much easier.
What has the experience been like?
It’s just been great. Getting to learn more about each of these women, their stories, how they got to where they are, I think it’s really inspirational.
Taking into account all the barriers that they face every day and how steadfast and determined they still are in pursuing their education, honestly, it inspires me because how am I going to skip class when there are people on the other side of the world whose literal dream is to be able to go to college?
It’s been inspirational for me, and it’s been great seeing the impact that I’ve been able to have.
I think sometimes when you’re in the nitty-gritty of daily work, and you’re like, “Oh, I have to meet with 20 mentees this week,” it can be overwhelming.
But at the end, having various messages from my mentees thanking me for my help or telling me they got into college and received scholarships has been really rewarding, to just be able to be part of their journey as well.
A lot of these women don’t have access to laptops or very reliable Wi-Fi, so they’re typing out these essays on their phones in the middle of the night, and they’re taking online classes when they can.
A lot of these women were able to go to school until about middle school. They go to high school either online or in very limited circumstances.
I think a commonality between their stories is just how resilient they are and how many hoops they’re willing to jump through to keep learning and keep pushing toward their goals.
Where do you see this program in a couple years? What do you hope to gain out of it?
I think even between last year and this year, it’s been able to expand a lot already. Last year, there was way more demand. There were hundreds and hundreds of students who wanted to be matched up, and unfortunately, there just weren’t enough student volunteers to be able to meet that load.
My hope for the future is that every student who wants a mentor can get one and that the mentors are really able to help them along their journey and be able to be a very helpful resource. I hope that it continues to grow into something that is impactful, not just for a couple of students here and there, but on a more structural level.
I mainly just hope to leave a structural impact. When I graduate, I hope that this program will continue to be in place in future years because it’s very beneficial to both the mentors and the mentees to have this system in place.
I hope that it continues beyond my graduation.
I hope to keep in touch with the women that I’ve mentored and hopefully see them go to their dream colleges, get scholarships or pursue their careers.
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