Welcome to Afghans Empowered

In this brief introduction, the founder of Afghans Empowered details the motivation that has led to the creation of the organization. Learn a little bit about Mursel and her sister's background, and whats fueled their vision for creating a platform for awareness and representation for the Afghan community. Find out what projects are coming up soon, and learn how you can get involved and featured on the Afghans Empowered podcast!

Transcript

Summary transcript:
Hey, welcome to the first ever episode of the Afghans Empowered podcast. My name is Mursel, and I’m the founder of Afghans Empowered. I’m really excited to get this started so thanks for tuning in! I want to dedicate our first episode to a not-so brief introduction about Afghans Empowered and share with our followers the inspiration and motivation that has fueled our mission for this organization. This organization is founded by my sister and I, and I would absolutely love to have her on our first podcast but I know she’s prioritizing her studies at the moment and i really look forward to us both on the podcast but for now shes working behind the scenes.

Afghans Empowered is a vision we’ve been wanting to manifest for quite some time. Sparked by years of struggling to feel empowered by our own Afghan identities in our current political and social world, we’ve embarked on this incredible journey as two siblings building a dream together. Our dream consists of a safe space: where traditional cultures meet modernity, and individuals find a voice to speak for their people, their mother country, and a heritage that is embedded in their hearts and mind no matter the lands they’ve been born on. The name of this dream is Afghans Empowered  

Our organization serves as a social platform connecting Afghans from around the world by showcasing their hearts, minds,  talent and hard work, to inspire the generations of Afghans from the homeland and abroad to pursue their passions in STEM, humanities and the arts, academia, entertainment, philanthropy, journalism and more. We want to highlight the resources available in  local communities, and provide outreach for assistance, as well as representation. In addition Through Afghans Empowered, you can find information for non profit and international government platforms for aid and support, for those facing humanitarian crises, as well as support for underrepresented minority populations of Afghan nationals outside the motherland. 

And I am just so stoked to develop the organization and get it going. We have all our site and social media up, so you can follow, like, subscribe through our handle @AFGHANSEMPOWERED and check out afghansempowered.org. And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast! We’ll be covering an array of topics regularly, and inviting some incredible organizations as guests on our show to take about their missions and provide information and awareness to our followers. 

I really just want to dedicate this episode to explaining our background and influence and just sort of detail through that experience which has become a very big motivating factor as to our vision and our mission for this organization. I’m not afraid to say that I’ve definitely have felt disempowered, resentful, and insecure about my identity when I was younger .I know my siblings and I were born in the u.s. my parents were born in Afghanistan so definitely can say that our experience resonates with alot of first-generation Afghan-Americans and we had a very conflicting identity that oscillated between the Afghan identity and what we're perceiving as the American identity . I can say that we’ve faced the same challenges that I think a majority of this generation born outside of Afghanista has faced. I had mentioned just now is that the conflicting view of culture was something that was causing a lot of issues within my own Family Circle and as teenagers we felt that need to rebelled against what our parents wishes were simply because we wanted to feel like we fit into our friendship groups, social groups, and the world around us but that never really felt like it was cohesive with the world that my parents came from.

 I also have to say that we did grow up in a time that was very heavily influenced by the events after 9/11 and so not only do we have issues with our parents at home but within the public spaces which were going out in public education system my siblings and I have a lot of stories to share when it came to stigma and stereotyping that we were facing when we're at school. And because we were practicing Muslims and because the Afghan identity is pretty cohesive with Islamic principles at least within my family's way of practicing tradition and culture, that really disaster faded our problems with feeling like we fit in because it created a lot of issues with Jen during with feeling comfortable in our social groups and not wanting to be made fun of because of our belief systems which was really hard to avoid because lot of kids at school didn't have a filter and that's possibly because their parents were influencing them out home in such a way to be extremely islamophobic and lack of knowledge about people from Central Asia and the Middle East.

It definitely took some time for my life story to take A positive turn in terms of how I perceived myself within the world around me but I can say that through self-education, heightened awareness, a hunger to learn more about my family's background, our history and the history of our ancestors in the places that they came from, I was able to teach myself that self-love that I was always lacking. But during that frame of time that it took for me to heal from that level of insecurity about my identity, I do  realize that unfortunately there is very little representation within our communities to empower people like me who are growing within a social space that has been our own within our own rights but has a lot of confliction when it's not necessarily the original society and environment that our parents came from and we absolutely just want to feel loved, like we fit in, and feel happy and safe in our spaces, but within that space to where we are figure ourselves out I think it's extremely important to factor in the fact that we need to have a lot of knowledge and exposure to our history in a way that is extremely productive in order to understand ourselves respect our families and where we come from and be optimistic about how we can blend that history with our present and create a better future 

So its through that motivation to feel heard, to not want to reproduce levels of family trauma, self doubt, self depreciation that we wanted to take the positive self discovery of our identity and emulate that into something that would be empowering for others. 

And we know this is just the beginning, but we’ve been able to hit the ground running. We are so excited about our collaborations in the near future with several large non profits, the support we’ve received on social media, and the positive feedback from our outreach efforts. Afghans Empowered continues to grow its awareness and influence in our community, and we hope to soon be visible and recognizable internationally! But we couldn't do it without you guys. Afghans Empowered is an open dialogue space, open to all invitations of thought, content, and contributions. If you’d like to be featured on our podcast as a Q+A guest, debut as guest writer or content producer for our site and social media, have us share and promote your cause, and more, email community@afghansempowered.org