Partnership Spotlight: Roya Mahboob and the Digital Citizen Fund
This week’s post features Roya Mahboob and the Digital Citizen Fund. Oppia has been working closely with Roya and DCF to help equip younger students with foundational mathematics knowledge. Read on to learn more!
You may have heard of Roya Mahboob by now. Either through one of the articles featuring her life and work in the Financial Times or Al Jazeera, or from any number of the awards she’s won recently, or possibly from when she was named as one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in 2013. Even if you haven’t heard of Roya’s story, it’s one worth reading. Roya has spent the last 10 years helping open doors for girls and women through technology and STEM education.
Growing up as the daughter of Afghan refugees in conservative Iran, life’s possibilities may have seemed limited at first. It wasn’t too long ago when her own life trajectory was altered after using a computer for the first time. Her family had just returned to Herat, Afghanistan when she stumbled upon an internet cafe. After some initial discouragement from the shopkeeper, who insisted a computer shop was a place for boys only, he finally relented thanks to Roya’s persistence. That small shop was where Roya first learned to use a computer, opening her eyes to a world of possibilities. What some might have seen as clunky technology full of plastic and wires, Roya saw as a portal to access the world’s information and an opportunity to connect with people from all over who didn’t know where she was from or what she looked like. This experience set her on a path to study technology through a UN Development Program and later, computer science at Herat University. After graduating, Roya co-founded the Afghan Citadel Software Company (ACSC), a business that competed for government sponsored software projects, giving her a first taste in entrepreneurship.
Leading ACSC, Roya faced challenges typical of a new company joining a competitive industry, pressure from competitors, managing employees and profitability. Then, there were the challenges Roya faced unique to being a young, female executive in a male dominated sector in Afghanistan — backlash from conservatives who didn’t want women to work outside of certain businesses and threats from the Taliban [for working with the US military].
Her experiences with technology inspired her to use her profits to open doors for other girls and women in Afghanistan. With the help of a business partner, Roya launched the Digital Citizen Fund (DCF), a nonprofit focused on bridging the gap between education and the job market by helping girls and women around the world access technology. The nonprofit has since built 13 technology centers where girls are empowered through education in technology, programming, finance, and business. DCF has done more than just provide an education, it has helped spark that same entrepreneurial spirit Roya found in herself all those years ago. To date, DCF has 16,000 graduates and has incubated 100 female startups.
If her story wasn’t inspiring enough already, Roya has also helped coach and mentor the world renowned Afghan Girls Robotics team, better known as the Afghan Dreamers. The all-girls team, consisting of a dozen or so girls between the ages of 14 and 18, was formed in 2017 by Roya and DCF. The team has had many newsworthy accomplishments, including the underdog story of their success and their age-defying engineering feats — like designing a low-cost, low-tech ventilator during the COVID-19 pandemic. The self-proclaimed “Afghan Dreamers” is a fitting name, too. In a country where two-thirds of adolescent girls cannot read or write, the Dreamers have inspired an entire nation to see the potential of girls differently.
As of late, Roya has been focused on education. She sees STEM education as the key to the future for Afghan women in an increasingly globalized world and understandably so [according to UNICEF, 3.7 million Afghan children are out of school, 60 percent of whom are girls]. Roya is currently partnering with the Afghan government to help develop and build STEM schools in Afghanistan. The schools and curriculum, she believes, will increase women’s participation in the workplace and further unlock the potential of Afghanistan’s next generation of tech leaders and entrepreneurs. Roya is also working on incorporating an online education component that would increase access to education and help fill the gaps in individual learning journeys.
Partnership with Oppia
Oppia is proud to be working with Roya and DCF to empower learners across the globe with access to high-quality, engaging education. We believe that supplementing high-quality in-person instruction with an interactive platform can further improve a student’s likelihood of success in school and in life.
Digital Citizen Fund already offers a strong STEM curriculum for girls 12 and older. Now, through Oppia, they are able to reach younger students and equip them with foundational mathematics knowledge as preparation for STEM and entrepreneurship pathways. Oppia’s basic mathematics lessons make learning engaging and enjoyable. “I did not like math before as I didn’t learn well and it took so long to solve a simple math problem but with Oppia lessons, I learn on my own and I really love it now” said Marwa, one of the DCF students.
Oppia and DCF look forward to deepening our partnership this year and into 2022.
“I believe very strongly that the key to our future is the children we are teaching today. We are very excited to partner with Oppia to provide math training online. We have seen the difference in our students and are happy with the results” — Roya Mahboob
See Oppia’s basic mathematics lessons here to learn more.
