Building a Home, Building a Movement
Shabana Basij-Rasikh, School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA)
Shabana Basij-Rasikh is the co-founder and president of SOLA, the School of Leadership, Afghanistan. SOLA educates Afghan girls to be the future women leaders of Afghanistan: it is the only organization of its kind, and Shabana joins us to share the story of her path to creating not only a school, but a worldwide movement of educated Afghan women.
From its birth as a boarding school in Kabul in 2016 with fewer than 25 girls enrolled, SOLA today educates tens of thousands of Afghan students worldwide: at its campus in Rwanda, via partnerships with leading educational institutions, and through its digital learning platform SOLAx. SOLA has operated in Rwanda since 2021 when Basij-Rasikh led the evacuation of her entire school community away from Afghanistan as the Taliban reclaimed power, and SOLA is now completing construction on a new Rwandan campus that will open for the start of the school year this September.
What began in Afghanistan continues now in Rwanda, and Basij-Rasikh will speak to the lessons learned and inspiration found in building this new campus – this home for Afghan girls – as she works to build an international sisterhood of Afghan women with the tools and capacities to become bold leaders on a global scale.
About Shabana Basij-Rasikh
Shabana Basij-Rasikh is the co-founder and president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA). SOLA is the first and only boarding school for Afghan girls, operating in Kabul from 2016 through 2021 and the Taliban’s return to power. In August 2021, Basij-Rasikh led the evacuation of her entire school community from Afghanistan to Rwanda, where SOLA reestablished its operations and its students resumed their studies. Basij-Rasikh has overseen SOLA’s successful growth in Rwanda; in 2025, the school received 5,416 applications from Afghan girls worldwide for approximately 30 spots on campus. She also oversaw SOLA’s expansion into the digital realm with 2024’s launch of SOLAx, a WhatsApp-based online academy with more than 20,000 learners.
Basij-Rasikh is a 2011 magna cum laude graduate of Middlebury College and holds a Master in Public Policy from Oxford University. In 2018, she was awarded the Malalai Medal, one of Afghanistan’s highest national honors, for her work in promoting girls’ access to education. In 2023, she received the Rolex National Geographic Explorer of the Year award from the National Geographic Society.
Learn more about Shabana.
