Pax Populi Academy was founded in 2010 on the premise that education is the most effective means of advancing lasting peace. For its first eleven years, Pax Populi offered a co-educational online English language learning program for students in Afghanistan. Through this program, tutors from over a dozen countries including the United States, India, South Korea, France, Scotland, and many other places worked with Afghan students across the country to assist them in learning English.
After the return of the Taliban, we spent a year working with Afghan refugees and small groups of Afghan female students. Two of our close colleagues who worked for Pax Populi for about six years in different regions of Afghanistan — Prof. M. Qasem Jami and Ms. Shabnam — both arrived at the resettlement camp at Fort Dix in New Jersey. They met each other face-to-face for the first time at Fort Dix and then got right to work to help in redeploying our program with new Afghan immigrants to the United States, many of whom knew almost no English at all.
After concluding that we could continue working in Afghanistan, in the fall of 2023, we launched Pax Populi Academy as an underground full-curriculum school for women and girls who have been banned from attending school beyond 6th grade. The new Pax Populi Academy had a student body of 25 students who met five days a week for a school year that ended on June 30, 2024. The second year we expanded our school to serve more than 60 students in grades 8 through 12.
We recently started the third year of our online school. We received more than 1,500 applications from interested students, and have expanded our school to serve more than 110 students in grades 7 through 12. Students get to study a full selection of subjects from chemistry to philosophy to computer programming to English. Rigorous classes like pre-calculus and calculus, essay writing, and literature equip our students with the skills they need to excel as scholarship students abroad. Our students also have opportunities to engage in our online school through teaching and volunteer work, and extracurriculars like art club and business club.
As women and girls in Afghanistan continue to face assaults on their rights, our work is more important than ever. Our school is a lifeline for our students, and it gives them a path to achieving their dreams. To support our work, please donate or explore other ways you can collaborate with us.