Pashtana Durrani is an International Scholar-in-Residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She is an Afghan human rights activist and community development expert who focuses on girls’ education. While at WCW, she continues in her capacity as a practitioner to develop models that support Afghan women and girls pursuing education and the health of Afghan mothers and infants.
Durrani founded LEARN Afghanistan (@LearnAfg), a grassroots organization established to safely and securely educate girls through a distributed network of tablet computers using an offline platform. Through LEARN, she has educated 10,000 girls and boys in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and trained more than 80 teachers in digital literacy. LEARN also focuses on girls’ health and has trained 700 girls in menstrual hygiene management. Through LEARN, Durrani runs six underground secret schools in Kandahar, Helmand, Daikundi, Samangan, Herat, and Bamyan. These schools educate 700 girls daily.
Durrani, a bold and outspoken commentator, is featured regularly on the BBC, CNN, PBS, and more.
Durrani served as a global youth representative for Amnesty International from 2017 to 2019. In recognition of her exceptional efforts to improve education for Afghan girls, she was named an Education Champion by the Malala Fund in 2020. Durrani’s innovative approach to addressing complex global challenges earned her the 2021 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Emerging Leader Prize. She was also honored as one of the BBC’s 100 Influential Women in 2021 and participated in #Times100talks in 2022. A graduate of the New Voices Fellowship in 2022, Durrani received the UN Young Activists Award 2022.
Her accolades also include the CEU Open Society Prize in 2023, the Global Citizen Award for Human Rights in 2023, and the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award in 2023. In 2024, she received the Women’s Excellence Award from the World Economic Forum, a Great Group Reads selection for her book Last to Eat, Last to Learn, and the Ali Center’s Daughter of Greatness Award. In January 2025, she was selected for the ILA 30 Under 30 List.
