Oslo Freedom Forum
In late September of 2018, Sahara, our friend Rahma and I attended the Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) held in New York. The OFF is a conference dedicated to showcasing some pretty awesome human rights advocates, tech entrepreneurs, artists, etc., from around the world to shed light to their stories and situations that we may not even know about, or don’t know enough of.
One of the names that my sister and I had took notice of was Fatemah Qaderyan. I had only ever read about Fatemah Qaderyan and her robotics team from different news outlets regarding the obstacles her and her team faced when being granted the visas to enter the U.S. Seeing her name on the list of speakers attending the conference only made us that much more excited to be attending 😬.
Who is Fatemah Qaderyan?
Fatemah Qaderyan, originally from Afghanistan, is a 16 year old captain and spokesperson of Afghanistan’s all-female high school robotics team. Within the last two years, her and her team competed in two major robotics competitions - one in Estonia where they received the medal for first place, and the second one being in Washington, D.C. going home with the silver medal in second place for creating a robot that uses solar energy to support small-scale farmers in their fields.
From a young age, Fatemah was intrigued and inspired by the world of robotics. It was after she had watched the children’s movie, Robots (if you haven’t yet seen it, then PLEASE go and watch it! It’s a bit of an oldie, but a goldie.) hat she knew she wanted to learn more about the world of robots. After watching that movie, she turned to her mom and said “I’m going to make a Robot for you one day so it can help you around the house”; her parents were behind her and her endeavors to create and learn more about the robotics field from the very beginning, and when things got tough her father would be the one to continue encouraging her to keep at it.
So, what made Fatemah’s speech at the Oslo Freedom Forum so eye-opening and inspiring?
The resources to help Fatemah and more girls like her receive an education in STEM are scarce and almost non-existent in Afghanistan. For Fatemah, being put in this situation of hardly having the resources available to pursue her passion in tech began to serve as a means to persist and persevere in order to pave a path and plant the seed of technology for more girls like her to have all of the resources they needed. For girls and children like her, growing up in conflict zones and a war-torn country only made things that much more difficult.
Fatemah knew that there needed to be a growing community of more women in tech in her own country, and that technology in general needed to start making a larger presence. There needed to be this source of encouragement to pave this path that hasn’t ever been imagined for young girls, and instead of Fatemah looking at her situation as an obstacle from preventing her to do what she wanted to achieve, she saw it as a chance to plant that seed of technology they so desperately needed and desired.
It’s 16 year old girls like her and her teammates’ story that left me wanting to do more for women in tech, in hopes of helping bridge that gap and advocate for the growth that this filed needs for more girls. The fact of the matter is that regardless of what region you’re in, the lack of women in technology is always present and that’s slowly starting to change. So, what were the lessons I learned from Fatemah’s story?
(1) When you’re presented with a problem, try not to be quick to look at it as an obstacle.
Acknowledge the problem you’ve been presented with, asses what you can from it, and see what you can do to change the outcome to end up in your favor to the best of your ability. Look at it as a means to grow, and not hinder you in any way from what you want to achieve because oftentimes (as much as we may reallyyyy dislike it), we learn the most and grow exponentially when we’re put in unfamiliar situations. You might find yourself in a bit of a rut at times with the problems you’ve been presented with, and that’s ok! Look at it as a means to learn from it; you’ll always have your highs and lows (not very fun, I know lol), but neither of those will be ever permanent and it’s in those moments where we learn the most about ourselves and grow.
So, don’t ever hesitate to reach out for a helping hand when you need it. You’re never alone, and it’s by human nature that we naturally perform better and yield better results in communities. We don’t succeed as much when we do things alone, and it’s the reason humans became one of the most successful species - because we work best and produce far better outcomes on a communal level. So don’t be afraid to reach out when you need it, because more often than not people are always willing to help - you just have to ask for it. :)
(2) Do your part, plant your seed, and don’t worry so much about the outcome.
When you’re presented with the problem you’re facing, don’t focus so much on what the outcome will be. You can’t always anticipate it, and that’s ok - take it as a way to reassure yourself that your main concern for now is doing your part, and more. That doesn’t mean you should sit idly and just hope for the best because you won’t know the outcome.
What it does mean is that you should plan what you can, do what is within your capabilities, work as hard as you can and step out of your comfort zone to help you achieve the outcome you’re hoping to come out with. But, don’t get super caught up on what will happen in the end. Take things in incremental steps - take the means to write down your goals (however small, even if it’s to wake up earlier) to help reach your milestones, and so long as you take the means to do your part and remain consistent and persistent then you’re already one step ahead. What you want might not happen overnight, and success never happens that way anyway. And that’s ok too - if it did, you probably won’t appreciate the success you’ve achieved as much.
So plant your seed, nourish it, and the outcome that’s best for you will always follow. Even if it’s the outcome you hadn’t hoped for, you never know what good there is in the outcome you hadn’t hoped for.
(3) Give back what you can.
Always do what you can to also be that helping hand to others; give back and contribute to your community, your peers, etc. When we give back to others, whether that be on a large scale or an individual scale, we create stronger and healthier ties and help build that community of leaders to come and pave a path that hasn’t been created before.
We might not see what we had hoped for in our lifetime, but the help that you give will help create something bigger. You never know what goodness you’re creating for others to come, and there’s great beauty in that - so always strive to be that helping hand.
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“In the end, I hold to this belief that we cannot predict the future but we can build ourselves so that the future we want becomes inevitable.”
- Fatemah Qaderyan
To get a more in depth read on Fatemah’s story, and to learn more about the non-profit organization founded in NYC that helped provide Fatemah and more girls like her the resources they needed to receive an education in tech, then head over to the following links!
