2017–2019
Global youth representative
Amnesty International
Our Founder
Pashtana Durrani
Pashtana Durrani founded Learnistan to give girls what comes after school: skills, higher education, and work that lasts.
Why Learnistan exists
Girls need more than a classroom. They need a future to step into.
Learnistan exists because finishing school should open doors, not close them. Pashtana Durrani has spent her life getting girls into classrooms, because she believes an educated girl changes her family, her community, and her country.
After 2021, women in Afghanistan were banned from universities and from most paid work. Girls could still learn, but there was nowhere for that learning to go. Education alone was no longer enough.
Learnistan is built to close that gap. It is the next step for girls graduating from LEARN and programs like it: real skills, a path to higher education, and paid work that builds a sustainable future instead of a future that depends on humanitarian aid.
What Learnistan does
From the classroom to a career.
Learnistan trains girls in technology and the skills that lead to real careers, and helps them move toward higher education. Then it hires them. Graduates learn with us and work with us in safe, dignified, paid roles, building tools for their own communities.
The work they are hired into
As developers
Next: in mental health roles
Learning is harder when you are carrying fear and isolation, so Learnistan also built WellMate. It is a private wellbeing companion for Afghan and diaspora women, available in Pashto, Dari, and English.
Education becomes a livelihood. A student becomes a colleague.
Where it began
Whatever she learned, she brought home and taught.
Pashtana's family ran a small school for local girls out of their home. Whatever she learned, she brought home and taught. In 2018 she founded LEARN Afghanistan, the country's first digital school network, and kept it teaching even after she was forced into exile. That work is the foundation Learnistan is built on.
LEARN Afghanistan, by August 2021
By the time the Taliban returned to power, the first digital school network in the country was already running.
18
digital schools across southern Afghanistan
10,000+
children educated
80+
teachers trained in digital literacy
Recognition
Pashtana's work has been recognized around the world.
2020
Education Champion
Malala Fund
2021
100 Women
BBC
2021
100 Most Influential People
TIME
2021
Emerging Leader Prize
Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson
2022
Young Activists Award
United Nations
She is a frequent voice on BBC, CNN, and PBS.
School was the start. Learnistan is what comes next.
The work is not finished.
Learnistan turns that belief into skills, careers, and paid work for the girls who need it most. If this is a mission worth your time, there is a place for you here.