The nine members of an all-girl Afghan robotics team evacuated from Kabul to Qatar have built on their star status and captured hearts since fleeing their homeland.<\/p>\n
Now back in education and working on their entries for a global robotics competition, the girls worry about their immediate future but hope they can one day return to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Team member Ayda Haydarpour, 17, who switched onto digital engineering playing Super Mario as a child, said it was \"too hard\" to follow events in Afghanistan but hopes to return to open the first STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) school.<\/p>\n
\"My grandfather used to ask me lots of questions about his tablet and phone,\" she said with a smile.<\/p>\n
\"In Afghanistan, robotics is new, especially for women,\" said Haydarpour, who has three sisters back in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Her mother had worked as a teacher at a girls' high school, but the facility is yet to reopen following last month's fall of the government to the Taliban.<\/p>\n
The Taliban had banned women from work and education, confining them to homes during their brutal rule of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the Taliban vowed girls would be allowed to return to school although they have so far been effectively excluded, with a spokesman saying \"more time is needed\".<\/p>\n
While Haydarpour dreams of one day working for tech giant Microsoft, she is adamant that she wants \"to go back and serve my people\".<\/p>\n
In the robotics laboratory at Texas A&M, one of several US universities with an outpost in Qatar, Haydarpour hunched over a laptop decorated with colourful badges while her teammates assembled components.<\/p>\n
- 'Weather station' -<\/p>\n
The girls evacuated to Qatar were placed in one of three institutions depending on their needs with full scholarships granted by Doha.<\/p>\n
Some of their teammates remain in Afghanistan while others are in Mexico and the UAE.<\/p>\n
But the nine girls in Qatar all get together after school to work on their entries for the First Global Challenge robotics competition.<\/p>\n
Story continues<\/p>\n
Asked how their second day of school had gone, following their arduous departure from Afghanistan on a Qatari military plane and 10 days quarantine amid the coronavirus pandemic, the girls chimed back \"all good\" in chorus.<\/p>\n
Eight of the girls had a spirited exchange about a faulty component on a circuit board they were building to use on a CubeSat weather station.<\/p>\n
\"For one week we couldn't fix it -- so we changed the wire,\" said Haydarpour, holding up a printed circuit board trailing cables onto a lab bench dotted with toolboxes.<\/p>\n
Beside her, another member of the team assembled the plastic housing for the weather station while periodically checking her phone.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the table, half of the girls worked to build a robot capable of scooping up plastic balls and firing them away.<\/p>\n
\"It's for the shooter for the balls,\" said 18-year-old Somaya Faroqi, the team leader, as she and her teammate Florans conferred on how to fix a motor.<\/p>\n
She had earlier told AFP that she was \"so sad because we lost our family, our (robotics) coaches, our life\" by abruptly leaving Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
- 'Robotics award' -<\/p>\n
Roya Mahboob, founder of an Afghan software company, helped form the team which went on to develop a low-cost ventilator last year at the height of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The girls made headlines in 2017 after being denied visas to take part in a robotics competition in Washington -- before then-president Donald Trump intervened and they were allowed to travel.<\/p>\n
The same year the girls won a prestigious robotics award.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken dropped in on the girls during a visit to Qatar earlier this month.<\/p>\n
\"I was honored to meet several remarkable women & girls of the Afghan Robotics Team. Their journeys & STEM aspirations are inspiring,\" he tweeted.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Cieslinski, a laboratory manager at the university, called the girls' skills \"a really high level\" despite their ordeal.<\/p>\n
But Haydarpour still worries about the future and education of girls in her country.<\/p>\n
\"What will happen in Afghanistan?\" she asks. \"It's too hard to see your country in that situation.\"<\/p>\n
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Afghan girls robotics team design their future in Qatar - Yahoo News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The nine members of an all-girl Afghan robotics team evacuated from Kabul to Qatar have built on their star status and captured hearts since fleeing their homeland. Continue reading