Where do you look to find the light?

2023 is ending. A year of violence worldwide, a year of war and of loss. A year of so many things coming undone. In years like this, in years of darkness, where do you look to find the light?

My answer starts here.

My answer starts with SOLA’s 2023 admissions season. A season that saw us receive 1,950 applications from students in more than 10 nations.

1,950 applications. Our previous high was in 2021, our final year in Kabul, another year of great darkness. We received a little more than 260 applications that year. This year, it was nearly 2,000.

Our admissions season is officially over, and we’re in the process of contacting every girl who we’ve accepted or waitlisted. Earlier this year, we forged a partnership with the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) – a partnership I’m extraordinarily proud of and thankful for – and just as with our previous class of admitted students, we’ll be working closely with IOM to bring our 2023 class safely to us in Rwanda.

These new students, these Afghan girls who will join the other Afghan girls at SOLA, these two groups of sisters who’ve not yet met – they are the light I see.

I see their light, but I don’t look away from the darkness.

I don’t look away from the reality that drove this monumental spike in applications, and the reality is this: for these students, there is simply nowhere else to go. For them to receive an education, it’s SOLA, or it’s nothing at all.

I don’t look away from these girls who applied to join us but who we simply don’t have the physical capacity to enroll. I don’t look away from the hundreds of thousands of girls in refugee communities across the Afghan diaspora whose opportunities to learn are limited at best and nonexistent at worst. I don’t look away from a single girl in Afghanistan, where the darkness has fallen with such weight.

I don’t look away from the girls who can’t come to SOLA. And in 2024, we intend to start bringing SOLA to them.

This past spring, I was named Explorer of the Year by the National Geographic Society. It was a profound honor, and I was and am so happy to use my position to begin sharing news of SOLAx: a WhatsApp-based online academy that’ll be open to every Afghan girl, everywhere.

We’ve been working hard on SOLAx in 2023, all behind the scenes. In 2024, we plan on raising the curtain. You’ll be hearing much more from me about this soon.

You’ll be hearing about it, and so will so many people – so many new members of SOLA’s global village of supporters. In 2023, our story truly went worldwide as we were profiled on CBS’s 60 Minutes, and I’ll always be grateful to Lesley Stahl and her team for working so diligently and so sensitively to craft a piece that has made an impact, a deep and profound impact, on millions of viewers.

You, the person reading these words, may well be one of those viewers. You’re without doubt a member of this global village I spoke of.

And I write to you, and I look to you, and I find the light here too. The light of hope, and of belief in the future, and that is a light that never goes out.

You’re with us as we conclude one of the most remarkable years in our school’s history.

We grow and thrive in Rwanda. We’ll continue to do so. We innovate ways to bring education to more Afghan girls than ever. We’ll continue to do so.

We do it all because we know that educated girls are the peacemakers. They’re the ones who can heal the world.

In dark days, we work toward the light.

2023 is ending. 2024 awaits.

And we will meet it together.