To: The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Bring Team Afghanistan to the UK
Let's invite Afghanistan's all-girl teenager robotics team over to visit the UK and meet academics and students working in robotics.
The USA has denied these girls visas to attend FIRST Global Challenge – an international robotics competition happening in Washington DC in mid-July.
The all-girl team representing Afghanistan hails from Herat, a city of half a million people in the western part of the country. To interview for their visas, the girls risked a 500 mile trek cross-country to the American embassy in Kabul – the site of several recent suicide attacks and one deadly truck bomb in early June that killed at least 90 people. Despite the recent violence, the teenagers braved the trip to the country's capital not once, but twice, hoping a second round of interviews might help secure their 7-day visas after the team was rejected on its first try. But no luck. (Source Forbes)
The USA has denied these girls visas to attend FIRST Global Challenge – an international robotics competition happening in Washington DC in mid-July.
The all-girl team representing Afghanistan hails from Herat, a city of half a million people in the western part of the country. To interview for their visas, the girls risked a 500 mile trek cross-country to the American embassy in Kabul – the site of several recent suicide attacks and one deadly truck bomb in early June that killed at least 90 people. Despite the recent violence, the teenagers braved the trip to the country's capital not once, but twice, hoping a second round of interviews might help secure their 7-day visas after the team was rejected on its first try. But no luck. (Source Forbes)
Why is this important?
Getting education in Afghanistan is hard enough. Being a girl and getting education is much harder. And these teenage girls are doing a robotics project! Trump's USA says 'no entry'. Let's bring them to the UK and encourage them, not knock them back like Trump has done.
