Alumni Gazette

Goal: Helping Afghani Youth

Awista Ayub ’01 was two years old when she last set foot in Afghanistan. It was 1979, and her family was fleeing the Soviet invasion. Her parents, with three small children and her mother’s teenage sister, emigrated to the United States, leaving behind much of what they owned.

Now, Ayub hopes to reconnect with her homeland through her new venture, a nonprofit sports camp and international student exchange program designed to bring Afghani high school students to the United States.

“I was born in Afghanistan and grew up playing sports,” Ayub says. “But kids in Afghanistan haven’t had the opportunity to play sports for the past 23 years. I felt strongly about starting the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange—it’s my country, my culture.”

The first group in the program arrived this summer for a month-long stay at a school in Connecticut, and Ayub has made arrangements with several schools, including Russell Sage College in Troy, N.Y., and boarding schools in Massachusetts and Maryland, to host the Afghani students.

She also has a contact in Afghanistan—an athletic director at a Kabul high school—who may be able to help organize the groups as they come to the United States.

Although the exchange is focused on learning soccer “drills and skills,” Ayub plans to include leadership training—a must for instilling self-esteem, “especially in girls,” she says—during the four-week camp. She hopes the students will then teach what they learned in the program in their own schools and neighborhoods, and start soccer teams back home.

Creating a nonprofit organization from the ground up could be a daunting task, but people who know Ayub don’t question her ability and drive. As a student, Ayub won the Susan B. Anthony Prize, awarded by the Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership to recognize exceptional leadership, scholarship, and student involvement, and she helped launch Rochester’s women’s hockey team. Five years later, the team is still going strong.

“She’s a remarkable woman,” says Dan Watts, assistant dean of freshmen and associate director of residential life who got to know Ayub when she was a residence hall advisor and a member of the freshman housing committee in her Take Five year. “She has firm and clear opinions which are well thought out. She was a great motivator for the freshmen.”

Head R.A. Josh Diehl agrees: “Awista has tons of personality—she was an instant leader. Her freshman hall was great. She was good at keeping people enthused, and she was good at defusing conflict. When she sets her mind to something, you know it will be special and it will come to fruition.”

Chemistry professor Jack Kampmeier considered Ayub one of his key student teachers in the Workshop Program in Undergraduate Teaching for his large organic chemistry class.

“She got people excited about organic chemistry through the sheer force of her personality,” Kampmeier says. “She has a great interest in helping other people learn.”

For her part, Ayub says the biggest challenge to the program could come from her home country, where the social and political situation remains unsettled.

“From what I know, there are still some [violent events] there every day, but there’s progress, especially in Kabul,” she says. “Schools are reopening there, with sports programs. But outside the capital, it’s hard to say.”

She had hoped to visit Kabul before starting the camp to find out what she’s up against. “On the U.S. end, things have been working out, but in Afghanistan it’s harder. Phone calls are expensive, and not everyone has e-mail.”

Beyond the exchange, Ayub is looking ahead to a career that will allow her to continue working with people. Spending a year as a team leader in the volunteer organization AmeriCorps after graduating from Rochester cemented her desire to teach and help others.

“I wouldn’t enjoy a career unless I’m working directly with others,” she says. “I’d like to work with entrepreneurs who want to start nonprofits—help them network, create Web sites, contact lawyers to represent them. And I would like to make it a free service.”

Such goals are within the reach of a woman who has the passion of a true entrepreneur, says Watts.

“Awista has always dreamed of bridging the U.S. and Afghanistan,” he says. “If anybody can create a student exchange program between the two countries, she can.”

—Jayne Denker