“If I can help merely four girls in Afghanistan to go their way of education and to start a career, then my goal is reached.” Those are the words of Zahra Hashimi, who found refuge in Austria with her parents and her four siblings in 2015. Today, she is one of the most important women and human rights activist in the Austrian-Afghan community. At the moment, she is building up an online school for girls in Afghanistan, the Omid online School. It already teaches over 100 students with an internationally connected base of voluntary teachers.
Zahra studied math before having to flee from her home country due to the Taliban. The way from Afghanistan to Austria was hard, the story no different from those of other refugees – but with an impressive ending. 3 years of asylum procedures, learning German, being a translator, tutoring in English and math in Persian, Hindi and German. Later, after arriving in Vienna, she trained as an office administrator and finished a course in video journalism. In 2021, projects in Farsi for the ORF news and the mirror project followed. “It was a long and arduous road, with plenty of resentments, but I kept on going.” Today, Zahra works for Fremde werden Freunde as Community Manager and Content Producer, networks with other organizations and conducts interviews for the podcast JourneyStories. In 2022, she founded the above-mentioned online school, a project very close to her heart.