Ladies’s Voice Radio Helps Afghan Teen Reclaim Her Future — International Points

 kabulFriday, June 13, 2025Inter Press ServiceThe writer is an Afghanistan-based feminine journalist, educated with Finnish assist earlier than the Taliban take-over. Her id is withheld for safety causes

KABUL, Jun 13 (IPS) – Mehrangiz is a sixteen-year-old lady from Badakhshan, a province within the northeastern Afghanistan famed for its rubies, jewels, and a land of affection and wonder.

For the reason that Taliban’s return to energy in 2021, strict restrictions have been imposed on girls’s freedoms, driving girls right into a dead-end lifetime of no prospects, leading to an increase in psychological well being disaster and suicides amongst them.

Mehrangiz credit her restoration to Ladies’s Voice Radio. She narrates her life story as follows:

After I was within the tenth grade, I had goals and aspirations. On daily basis, I labored tougher than the day earlier than to achieve objectives that I needed to realize sooner or later. There was no electrical energy in my village, so I might research at night time subsequent to a kerosene lamp, clinging to the hope that sooner or later my goals could be fulfilled.

In the future, as I sat within the backyard writing, I heard the cries of one among my classmates that we may not go to high school or research. It shocked me into silence.

Days handed. I assumed the state of affairs could be momentary, and I continued to review, hoping to not fall behind and obtain success in life like women in different components of the world.

However ultimately I may not endure the suffocating silence. When would women be allowed to return to high school? That query appeared to don’t have any reply – indefinitely. I started to lose the combating spirit to proceed. Sleeplessness and lack of urge for food overwhelmed me, and the world of my goals had turned to just one colour—black!

Life grew to become more and more troublesome with every passing day, and I felt I couldn’t stand it any longer. The despair was so overwhelming that sooner or later, on the peak of my anger and frustration, I burnt all my textbooks.

The darkness of life numbed me and I made a decision by no means to attempt to research any extra. I stored myself busy with family chores and bodily actions at house, making an attempt to keep away from fascinated by the longer term.

Nevertheless, a ray of sunshine illuminated my path sooner or later after I went out procuring with my mom. The change started as a small occasion however carried a really massive consequence.

After we grew to become drained after procuring round, we determined to take a relaxation at Kedbanu – a girls’s-only restaurant – for lunch. A health care provider was on air at Sadee Banowan radio, one of the vital widespread radio stations in Badakhshan. She was speaking about melancholy.

I grew to become captivated by the physician’s inspiring and soothing phrases, I even needed to decelerate my consuming to pay attention correctly.

When my mom glanced at me, I gestured to her about what was coming over the radio and she or he, too, started to pay attention. Our ears remained pricked as much as the radio to the very finish.

The physician’s phrases had been charming, equally so was the expertise of the radio host, who requested questions as if he was deeply accustomed to the deep issues going through numerous Afghan women.

The state of affairs of ladies and women in Afghanistan went into speedy decline after the Taliban regained energy 4 years in the past. Below strict Islamist legal guidelines, they had been barred from additional schooling, compelled out of paid unemployment and largely confined to the house. They weren’t allowed to sit down in parks and even elevate their voices when speaking. Pressured marriages grew to become their lot.

The extreme restrictions took a heavy psychological toll on girls, lots of who dedicated suicide due to melancholy and different psychological sicknesses.

On the finish of the physician’s broadcast, I made a phone name to the radio for additional data and to my delight, was knowledgeable that I may additionally talk about my private issues with the physician.

Counseling and a New Outlook on Life

The next day I used to be on the gates of the radio station with a combination feeling of enthusiasm and trepidation.

I used to be not sure I might truly be capable of share my issues with them, since in gentle of the state of affairs of Afghanistan up to now 4 years, everybody appeared centered on discovering options to their particular person issues with no time for others.

However ultimately, after I sat earlier than the exact same physician whose phrases had held me captive on the radio yesterday, I couldn’t even describe something comparably extra uplifting.

The physician offered me with helpful pointers about how you can cope in life. “Allow us to attempt to discover another approach to life fairly than ruining our souls and tormenting our households. Allow us to belief in God”, she suggested.

It motivated me to dwell higher and struggle in opposition to difficulties that pressed me, giving me the power to develop and change into stronger.

She suggested me to exit often and revel in myself, meet mates, put on vivid colours similar to orange, crimson, and yellow, and deal with being comfortable.

I’ve had 4 free psychotherapy periods and about 30 p.c of my issues have been resolved. My psychological state has improved. Life is smiling upon me as soon as once more. I now see life as stunning, stuffed with solely vibrant colours with none trace of black, in contrast to beforehand.

Ladies’s Voice Radio: A Beacon Amidst Restriction

Ladies’s VoiceRadio has been on air since 2010. It is likely one of the hottest and cherished radio stations amongst girls in Badakhshan. In the middle of its existence, its recognition has soared a lot that it broadcasts 24 hours a day, attracting each women and men to its informative packages.

Nevertheless, Ladies’s VoiceRadio station, which is devoted particularly to girls, has confronted rising restrictions following the rise of the brand new regime in Afghanistan in 2021. Within the early days of the Taliban regime, the radio station was shut down for 23 days for merely broadcasting a number of seconds of music included in a business commercial. It has since resumed broadcasting.

Since then, Ladies’s Voice Radio has developed a number of new packages, such because the “Maktab” (Faculty) program, devoted to women in grades seven to 12. The programme offers curriculum supplies by lecturers and different professionals by way of radio to women who are usually not allowed to go to high school.

“Psychotherapy” is one other program that helps girls confined to their houses, a excessive proportion of whom expertise melancholy and stress. This system is hosted by a psychotherapist who offers efficient recommendation and steerage to girls and women, introducing them to numerous wholesome actions and methods to deal with life’s challenges. Certainly, officers of the radio plan to determine a big psychotherapy heart in Badakhshan to satisfy the rising demand for psychotherapy by susceptible girls and women.

“Artwork within the Embrace of Ladies” is one other inspirational program for ladies that highlights progressive and inventive girls who’ve demonstrated initiatives throughout varied fields, notably in enterprise, entrepreneurship, and funding, serving as fashions to different girls to look as much as.

A New Chapter

To cap all of it, I’ve had good luck and have been provided a job on the radio station, the place I’ve been working for the previous three months. I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside great and pleasant girls, those that greeted me with smiles and heat hugs on my first go to to the radio station.

I’m studying worthwhile life classes—the teachings of overcoming challenges and serving to others to the identical. To everybody else, Ladies’s Voice Radio could also be a broadcasting station however to me, I think about it a college of life the place I be taught classes in how you can lead a very good life.

I’m now a member of a small however highly effective household.

© Inter Press Service (2025) — All Rights Reserved. Unique supply: Inter Press Service

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