Group of women become Afghanistan's first female coders скачать в хорошем качестве

Group of women become Afghanistan's first female coders

(6 Feb 2018) LEADIN A group of young Afghan women in the deeply conservative Herat province are breaking traditional barriers as the country's first female coders. They've created a game based on Afghanistan's struggle to eradicate the vast opium poppy fields ruled by the Taliban. STORYLINE Heading for another day in the office - these female coders are breaking barriers in an overwhelmingly male-dominated tech field in a war-torn country. The game they created at the Code to Inspire computer training centre in the city of Herat underscores Afghanistan's struggle to eradicate vast opium poppy fields ruled by the Taliban. For 20-year-old Khatera Mohammadi, a student at the Code to Inspire computer training center, it's more than just a game. "Fight against Opium" was based on her brother's real-life as a soldier in the poppy fields, battling opium traffickers, drugs and terrible mine blasts. "Afghan people really need more educational games which can change the educational lives of their children and it is very important. Considering the need, we are planning to continue with more educational projects in future," she says. Mohammadi and her colleagues at the centre thought that if they created a game, it would raise awareness of the battle to combat drugs, especially among the young. In the game, with five supporting lives, an Afghan soldier mimics a real-life mission in Helmand to clear out drugs. The soldier encounters various obstacles: the enemy hiding in tall corn fields, land mines, drug traffickers and hidden heroin labs. Afghanistan is the world's top cultivator of the poppy, from which opium and heroin are produced. The country produces more opium than all other countries combined, according to U.N. estimates. The southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar are where most of the poppy fields are and where the majority of the production takes place while Herat lies along a key smuggling route to neighbouring Iran and beyond. The Taliban, who have been waging war against the Afghan government since 2001, are heavily involved in poppy growing, which has increased in recent years, all but halting government eradication efforts. Mohammadi says she and her teammates completed the game in one month and her brother was the first person she showed it to. She declined to give her brother's name, fearing for his safety and the family's because he worked with American soldiers. Her dream, she says, is that one day the opium poppy would be replaced by the saffron crocus - so she put that in the game, having the soldiers encourage local poppy farmers to cultivate saffron instead. The Herat girls-only computer programming school, Code to Inspire or CTI, was the brainchild of Fereshteh Forough, who was born an Afghan refugee in Iran and only returned to Herat after the 2001 fall of the Taliban. A former Herat university professor now living in the United States, she seeks to break gender barriers and empower girls to learn to code as a way to change their lives. The school houses over 80 girls, both high school and university students. They learn to create their own websites, mobile applications, games and other web development projects. "This is aimed at empowering females to learn coding, because this is not easy for every girl to find a job and to go to work with men outside. So this is easy for them to learn coding and have just one laptop at home and sit there and get projects and work and earn money," says Hasib Rassa, the CTI project manager. After it's success so far organisers of the CTI are now hoping to see it grow. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...