Afghan Girls in Rwanda Receive a Be Body Positive Workshop

posted by Elizabeth Scott / April 28, 2023

School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA) Begins Again in Rwanda

Remember the images of the airport in Kabul as thousands of desperate people attempted to leave Afghanistan as the Taliban marched into the city following the American withdrawal? In the summer of 2021, that was just where 250 students, teachers, and staff from the girls School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA) found themselves as they attempted to escape a country where educating girls was about to, yet again, be made illegal. Their brave founder, Shabana Basij-Rasikh was already inside the airport, and she was implementing a carefully designed plan to guide each member of her school’s community to a cargo plane that would take them to safety.

You can imagine the intensity of the experience for each girl as she prepared to find her way to the airport. The wrenching goodbyes to her family as she left with only a few possessions in her hands to join a teacher or a staff member winding their way through chaos to the airport. The traumatic scenes at the entrance to the airport as each girl and each staff member attempted to connect with Ms. Basij-Rasikh, who had organized all of their paperwork and fought through the melee to pull them to safety. Then, hours later, lifting off the ground to fly to their new home in central Africa. Just five days later classes resumed in their new school location in Rwanda. Not a single student or staff member was left behind.

The Body Positive at SOLA

This is the brave community that invited The Body Positive to volunteer to conduct a workshop for the girls and staff last month. The Dean of Faculty at SOLA remembered The Body Positive teaching a workshop at a school in California years ago. She felt that The Body Positive’s focus on positive embodiment could be a useful resource to support the SOLA girls in adjusting to their lives in Rwanda as they brave the painful separation from their families and their country.

I immediately volunteered to lead the two-day training for 60 students. My 23-year-old daughter Uma came as my co-facilitator. (She led her first training as a Body Positive Facilitator when she was twelve.) We spent a good deal of the 25 hours in the air to equatorial Africa planning our training and adapting our teaching methods to embrace the diverse ages (12-20), and the cultural world view of the students as well as the limited English of some of the younger students. 

I would so love to share the beautiful faces of the students at SOLA, but we cannot post their images on the internet without risking exposure for their families at home. It is now illegal in Afghanistan to educate girls and women after primary school.

Meeting the Girls and Women of SOLA

After arriving in the beautiful, green, and very alive country of Rwanda, we found our way to SOLA, a beautiful campus with a view of the green hills all around. What a joy it was to meet the students! They surrounded us everywhere we walked on campus, first shyly introducing themselves in formal English, and soon after, hugging us and laughing. These young women of SOLA will truly be the next leaders of Afghanistan. They are an extraordinary group of brave, positive, and soulful girls and women. We were deeply honored to be invited to teach alongside the caring, brilliant, and committed staff who create a loving and academically challenging learning community at SOLA, and who embrace the girls as if they are their own children.

The Student’s Response to the Be Body Positive Model

The students engaged energetically in learning the Be Body Positive Model’s five Competencies and applying them to the work they are doing to care for themselves and each other. They are working hard to build a close community to support each other during the separation from their families, who they haven’t seen in 16 months. Their feelings of pain and loss were palpable. Together, they are developing themselves through their education and all of the creative healing methods SOLA offers, to shoulder the daunting responsibility of helping to transform their country of Afghanistan

Teaching is Improv Theatre!

The teaching staff at SOLA joined in the workshop and consulted with us at breaks to help us adapt to what was emerging in the group as we progressed. We focused on asking questions and exploring the girls’ own body stories. We simplified a lot of the Be Body Positive lessons to make them even more trauma informed and culturally relevant. And we adapted every step of the way to the students’ responses, making the activities more active and playful to engage them, even with language concerns. 

Trauma and Embodiment

There was so much to learn, and it was deeply moving to hear from the students about how they experienced their own bodies after all they have been through. Some students reported that they cope by allowing no feeling at all in their bodies, and others expressed the pain and grief they feel in their hearts, knowing what their families are going through at home. It was an honor to witness the care and protection they shared with each other, hugging and cuddling the younger girls and stopping us to help their teacher translate what we were saying to the 16 students who had arrived just two weeks before from a refugee camp and had limited English.

What We Learned Together

The songs we sang together, and the tears, laughter, and joy the girls shared with each other as they embraced self-love and the beauty of their own ancestors, is something I will never forget. In the final circle, each girl shared what had been the most important thing she learned. Some students shared how the Practice Intuitive Self-Care Competency gave them permission to eat and care for their bodies in a new, more responsive way. Some said they were proud to declare the beauty of their ancestors. But the majority said it was self-love that most inspired them… the feedback about our Cultivate Self-Love Competency just broke my heart open.

The girls earnestly thanked us for teaching them something so important. It was profound to hear them share their realization that they can allow themselves to have love and joy and food and self-care while at the same time staying present to their own pain and the needs of their parents and siblings at home. I whispered to Uma as we went around the circle, “Okay, I am committed to doing The Body Positive’s work for at least another ten years after hearing what it brought to these girls!”

Tree of Transformation Activity

The last activity we conducted was to work in small groups to identify what qualities would support a blooming of positive embodiment and self-love at SOLA. It was wonderful to listen to their ideas about what qualities build strong communities and to hear their commitment to building a Body Positive Community together. 

This recording is of Uma teaching the SOLA girls an American song. Later that evening the girls shared their traditional songs with us as they celebrated their Afghan New Year, while the teachers stirred a huge pot of New Year’s stew on an open fire. 

Rwanda: Transforming Violence into Cooperation

We discovered all of this beauty and bravery in the bosom of Rwanda; a nation that welcomed SOLA without hesitation. A nation that has transformed itself since the genocide 29 years ago into one of the most cooperative, beautiful, and non-violent places in the world. A people that are profoundly hopeful and creative in healing great loss and division. Rwanda is a place where people make every effort to take care of one another and the whole community. If asked, “Are you Tutsi or Hutu?” they will respond with great earnestness, “We are Rwandan!” They are committed to ending the divisions that colonialism fostered, and that led to a genocide in which a million people were murdered in just 100 days, in this nation the size of Vermont. The Rwandans have turned around hundreds of years of othering, using traditional restorative justice models similar to the South African “Truth and Reconciliation” process. The Peace Curriculum of the National Genocide Memorial is in every school in the country. They have made tremendous gains in building unity and cooperation, creating an example of what all of us can work towards. Every part of this powerful and transformative trip gave me hope for the human race.

I would love to share stories with you about our travels to Akagera National Park in Rwanda and the beautiful art from the women’s collective there… some other time.

I hope you will make a donation to SOLA to support their beautiful mission to educate these brave girls and young women who will be the future leaders of Afghanistan.

Learn more about SOLA by listening to Founder Shabana Basij-Rasikh’s Ted Talk.

Join me for a free Workshop where I will share my experience of teaching the Be Body Positive Model with Afghan students living in Rwanda.

Warmly,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Scott

Elizabeth Scott LCSW, CEDS-S, is Co-Founder and Director of Training for The Body Positive. She has been practicing psychotherapy for more than two decades in Marin County, CA. She studies Vipassana Meditation, a practical, embodied approach to awakening, which she finds to be an inexhaustible resource for finding joy and purpose in life.

Elizabeth Scott

Elizabeth Scott LCSW, CEDS-S, is Co-Founder and Director of Training for The Body Positive. She has been practicing psychotherapy for more than two decades in Marin County, CA. She studies Vipassana Meditation, a practical, embodied approach to awakening, which she finds to be an inexhaustible resource for finding joy and purpose in life.