The Marblehead Rotary Club hosted Shogofa Amini of Mazar Sharif, Afghanistan currently attending Salem State University, as guest speaker on Thursday, February 17, 2011
The Marblehead Rotary Club hosted Shogofa Amini, a twenty-two year old Exchange Student from Mazar Sharif, Afghanistan and who is currently studying at Salem State University as a guest speaker at its weekly luncheon at the Boston Yacht Club. Shogofa Amini, who is staying in Marblehead, MA with her American Host Family: Paul and Claire Crosby, was born 1989 and raised in Mazar Sharif, Afghanistan.
Shogofa shared with the Rotarians her life as a woman in Afghanistan pre and post the Taliban invasion. She recalled how her mother, a teacher, encouraged her and her two sisters to get a good education. She taught the girls that, ” education is a treasure, one can carry anywhere”. At age seven, Shogofa experienced first hand the changes the Taliban brought to her country, by forbidding the girls to study and restricted boys’ education to the study of Islam. She also experienced the culture of abuse and disrespect towards women the Taliban imposed. Even today, since the Taliban lost its grip on Afghanistan, it is very difficult for females to get an education, as most females, who didn’t come from an educated family like she did, just give up and resort to begging on the streets of Kabul. Shogofa said she is very fortunate to have been selected to study English at the School of Leadership for Afghanistan (SOLA), the Afghanistan’s partner of Dr. Robert McNulty’s Applied Ethics Inc., which eventually led to her educational opportunity in the U.S. Shogofi’s professional goals upon her return home are focused on: Women’s Rights and on the teaching of Women and Children’s rights to the people of Afghanistan!