Roya Mahboob, CEO and Founder of Digital Citizen Fund, image credit: Wired
My Vision:
To onboard the Digital Citizen Fund organization that Roya Mahboob founded onto Steemit. Why? Because the goals of Digital Citizen Fund and the goals of Steemit are perfectly aligned. For those not familiar with Digital Citizen Fund, here's an explanation from their website:
The Digital Citizen Fund is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in New York City. The Digital Citizen Fund helps girls and women in developing countries gain access to technology, virtually connect with others across the world, and obtain necessary skills to succeed in today’s expanding global market.
To accomplish this, the Digital Citizen Fund has built eleven Internet Training Centers and two stand-alone media centers in partnership with MTI (presently known as Bitlanders) and the Afghan Citadel. Through this collaboration, we have successfully enrolled over 9,000 young women in Kabul and Herat. We have recently expanded operations in Mexico as part of our effort to provide better opportunities for girls and women around the world. We are ready to scale our highly successful model to other countries as funding becomes available.
Our Goal
CREATE DIGITAL CITIZENS THAT ARE CAPABLE AND CONFIDENT IN THEIR VOICE
EMPOWER WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES TO ESTABLISH SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC LIVELIHOODS
ENCOURAGE PERSONAL GLOBAL CONNECTIVITY TO INSPIRE AND RAISE CULTURAL AWARENESS
PROVIDE SAFE, ACCESSIBLE ENVIRONMENTS FOR INDIVIDUAL AND CULTURAL EXPRESSION
How I Envision This Working
The Digital Citizen Fund is based on educating women and children about technology and financial independence. I see no better way to educate them than to have a Steemit course developed in their curriculum. Steemit is the tool that this school and this organization need to better equip these students with a digital future. Steemit solved a lot of my problems, and as a single mother, I can definitely say, I found my freedom on Steemit.
What I Need You To Do
My hope is that someone who speaks Pashto or Dari Persian will answer this #STEEMGIG. I have reached out several times to Roya, and we are currently communicating via Facebook messenger. She seems open to the idea, and I will try my best to make this happen. However, if there are any people from Afghanistan on Steemit, now would be a good time to join forces, and work together towards this goal. I do need help with this particular project and I am willing to pay you for your time in getting this to be a reality. I run many projects now and I want to work with others towards this goal.
First find out if Steemit.com is still having issues with sign-ups. My friend has been waiting for over a week, still no word from Steemit.
You need to find out if anyone from Afghanistan can sign up via Steemit, using their local phone number. If you are living in Afghanistan and have successfully signed up to Steemit, let me know. (If this is not possible, we will use Steem Connect.)
You need to reach out to Roya Mahboob and successfully onboard one of her students into Steemit.
After one female student from Afghanistan Digital Citizen Fund project has made it into Steemit, she is to contact me via placing a comment on one of my blog posts or email me at: steemgigsATgmail.com
I will need to communicate directly with this student to ensure she is properly mentored and gets all the help necessary in order to onboard the other students who will want to join up.
Roya Mahboob was listed as one of the top 100 most influential people of the world in 2013:
http://time100.time.com/2013/04/18/time-100/slide/roya-mahboob/
Here's what WIRED had to say:
Not long after Roya Mahboob was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2013, the Taliban delivered a threat.
Mahboob, 29, had used the profit from Afghan Citadel Software, her software development startup, to create ten centres for girls to study computing in Kabul and Herat. The Taliban told her that if she didn't stop, they would kill her.
Forced to flee Afghanistan, Mahboob arrived alone in New York in January 2014. She then embarked on two projects: a vocational training site called EdyEdy and, in early 2016, an as-yet-unnamed export company, bringing Afghan tea and coffee to the US and Middle East.
Both businesses fund Mahboob's training centres, which she has continued, despite the danger. "We give access to technology," she says. "We have 8,000 students and we're going to train 5,000 more in the next two years."
Digital Citizen Fund's 12 female teachers introduce 12- to 18-year-old Afghans to the basics of digital and financial literacy, followed by classes in coding or social media. Each year, 2,400 girls take the courses, but Mahboob wants to expand – first to rural areas, then to other countries.
She says she is sharing the experience that showed her the world could be bigger than she was told. "In any conservative society women are not equal. Technology can change this – it changed my world."
Ok, comment below if you believe you can make this happen.
Cheers,
Stellabelle
btw, follow @steemgigs here and on Twitter at @steemgigs.