Founder of Afghan Youth Sports Exchange Speaks at Skeptics
Lauded by Author of The Kite Runner

Awista Ayub, author of However Tall the Mountain and founder of the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange, spoke on “The Issue of Freedom for Women in Afghanistan” at the November 3 Society of Skeptics program. Ayub, who graduated from the University of Rochester in 2001 with a major in chemistry and organized a women’s ice hockey team during her undergraduate years there, was instrumental in bringing Shamila Kohestani ’08 to Blair Academy. The New York Times and other media outlets covered Shamila’s success at Blair; she is currently a student at Drew University. Click here to view the Times’ coverage.

In 1981, when Ayub was only two years old, her family fled Afghanistan for the United States, where Ayub flourished, thanks to organized athletics—and where she vowed to make a difference in her home country some day. Soon after the fall of the Taliban, Ayub saw her chance: She founded the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange, an organization dedicated to nurturing Afghan girls through soccer. What began with eight young women exploded into a phenomenon. Fifteen teams now compete in an organized league, with hundreds of girls participating through the Afghanistan Football Federation.

The success of the Afghan girls’ sports group has brought it, and Ayub, worldwide attention. Ayub has appeared on National Public Radio, ABC News, ESPN, and CNN, and in magazines from Sports Illustrated to Glamour. Her book, However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home, chronicles the story of the youth exchange and has been called “a testament to the power of hope and the will to dream in a country where so many dreams have been cut short.”

Updated 11/4/2009

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