The Taliban banned Afghan girls from school. What they could not ban was the act of reading.

Charmaghz, a HAMRAH Network member and operator of Afghanistan’s largest mobile library network, has built something in response: Parkhan, a growing network of weekly book clubs for Afghan girls, grouped by province and reading level, and facilitated by Afghan women navigating the same restrictions as the girls they serve.

What is Parkhan?

Parkhan fills an important gap that emergency education frameworks rarely reach. It is a structured, recurring space in which Afghan girls read together, finish books, and return the following week with something to say about what they have read.

What is being restored through Parkhan is not only access to books; it is the experience of having your thoughts treated as worth hearing, among peers, with continuity, in a space designed specifically for that purpose.

Under Taliban rule, Afghan girls have been shut out not only from classrooms but from almost every context in which collective thought and exchange can happen. Parkhan is one of the few spaces that exists specifically to give that back. As Liz Robinson, co-founder and Executive Director of Charmaghz, noted: “The demand speaks for itself. Every cohort we run, more girls apply than there are places.”

The programme is Afghan-led at every level. All facilitators are Afghan women. Charmaghz brings to this work its deep roots in Afghan communities and years of experience delivering books and learning into spaces where both have been made difficult or dangerous, experience built through its mobile library network, which sadly had to close earlier this year.

Why It Matters

This is precisely the kind of work HAMRAH exists to support: small in scale, significant in impact, grounded in Afghan leadership, and reaching the communities that international education frameworks rarely prioritise.

At a moment when international attention on Afghanistan is waning and funding for Afghan civil society is under pressure, Parkhan is a reminder of what Afghan civil society continues to build, and why it deserves sustained, flexible, long-term support.

Support Parkhan: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/freshta-foundation-inc