Afghanistan literacy

A 13-year old young lady from Vancouver has helped raise $300,000 so that girls can go to school in Afghanistan. This is simply incredible.

Well done, Alaina Podmorow. You've done more for women's education and civil rights in a few years than most people will achieve in a lifetime.

This is what can be achieved when ordinary people do extraordinary things. Our government ought to be taking notes, here:

When Alaina Podmorow was a shy nine-year-old, her mother asked if she'd like to go with her to a speech about how girls and women were treated in Afghanistan.

"At the time I thought, 'I'm not quite sure what this is about but I get to stay up late so I think I'll go to it,'" she says.

Four years later, having raised nearly $300,000 to help girls go to school in Afghanistan, she recalls eight words from that speech that she says she'll never forget: "The worst thing you can do is nothing."

The inspirational speech was given by Sally Armstrong, a Toronto-based author and human-rights champion who has chronicled the abuse of women under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and their struggle now for equality.

Poised and confident, Podmorow, 13, now gives inspirational speeches herself as the founder of the non-profit Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan, a fundraising organization that channels money for teachers' salaries and training through Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan.

"I found that it doesn't matter how little or young you are, you can make this difference," she said in an interview during a conference on Afghanistan hosted by the Canadian Federation of University Women.