In the Spotlight: JVS and the Afghan Girls Group
By Marisa Tesoro
In August 2021, staff at Jewish Vocational Service were conducting education orientation when they discovered a consistent need among newly arrived Afghan girls.
JVS realized this group needed more in-depth educational support as well as support that went beyond educational needs to help them thrive in school. Using their experience from working with prior groups—such as Burmese and Kinyarwanda-speaking arrivals—they sought to fill this gap.
Since January 2022, they have organized a group of Afghan girls that meets weekly to receive educational support and bolster their technical skills and self-confidence. Largely driven by the girls’ own requests, the group has gone on for two sessions over the course of two semesters with no signs of stopping.
“When you just see them and speak with them, you want to do everything you can for them because they all have a passion,” said Ayan Ali, Youth Mentor Coordinator at JVS. “The girls have more passion and want to be educated even though they were the ones who never had options before.”
To learn more about how this program came to be and its impact on these young women, MO-ORA talked with Meaghan Fanning, Youth Program Manager at JVS.
Answers edited for length and clarity.
So tell me about the Afghan Girls Group. How did it start?
Four therapists at JVS started the program. We were brainstorming, and we [realized] the vast majority of these girls either have never been in school or have clearly reported being scared about going to school. A few others actually were in college but couldn’t bring any of their transcripts and were starting over at 19 as freshmen in high school.
I think part of what we do that was cool is what’s called education orientation where one of the youth staff meets with every single resettled family to individually do their educational histories and then do an orientation class for school in the United States. We talk about expectations; we teach them how to read the calendar; we teach them about parent-teacher conferences. It’s usually about a 2-hour appointment per family just because so often if they have so many kids, it takes a long time to get through the education history.
So it’s kind of based on past experience, but as we were going through these education histories and we were meeting all these girls, [we realized] we’re sending them into a highly populated, decently violent, urban high school, so what can we do to ease that transition?
And then the idea came of a weekly group, and it was amazing. And really who kind of designed it—we designed the first three or four sessions—and then after we went off the needs or requests of the girls.
What did you all cover?
We did super basic stuff at the beginning, like can you read you read your school schedule? Is the bus successfully picking you up? We had so many kids that were at the wrong bus stop or they couldn’t read their bus slips. So we taught them how to read their bus slips. And we did an entire hour on how to call transportation if your bus doesn’t show up.
The thing is, it was not a therapy group. Nobody wanted that. We asked what they wanted to talk about and if they wanted to get into it. Everybody was like, No, our experiences were very different.
We have some girls that were never allowed to go to school, and then we have some girls that were horrified that there were girls that were never allowed to go to school. And it didn’t really seem like it was going to be a cohesive kind of space to do “trauma narratives” in.
We did a couple of career days where CNAs came in. We brought in the tech guy, literally the guy from the high school that fixes computers, and we walked every girl to his office to teach them where to go when they have a tech problem. Because it’s that shyness or that timid stuff that we were trying to combat from the beginning.
We’re trying to do sustainability. That's why we brought in the tech guy. We physically walked them down to the counselors’ office and introduced them to the counselors because we’re just a support program. We don’t work in the school. Don’t text us when you need to switch your classes. Go to your counselor because you know her, you met her, and she’s the one who can do it. And they’re doing it. It’s amazing. They're so cool.
How has the focus of the group changed over time?
So, our group was extremely practical. We met weekly during their advisory period for a semester. Then this semester, currently, it morphed into an after-school reading and tutoring group because the girls ended up identifying by the end last semester that academic gaps were the most important factor that was going to negatively impact their education.
We had kids who were telling us they wanted to drop out. And when we were asking why, it was I’m so embarrassed, or I’m so behind on reading or I can’t catch up. Even though they were in all the right classes, it just wasn’t enough one-on-one support.
So now the group is every Monday after school from 2:30 to 5:30 for reading, tutoring, kind of pump-up, “You can do this.” We have an interpreter who we schedule every week who sits with us for those sessions.
It’s been very fluid on purpose because we wanted the kids to drive it. And it’s been awesome. There was a spin-off sewing class, which was based on what they said they wanted.
You mentioned utilizing an interpreter for these sessions. Was one interpreter enough when considering the diversity of the group?
That was a huge learning curve for us, too, because we definitely picked up pretty fast on some cultural dynamics between Pashto speakers and Dari speakers.
For the first two groups, we focused significantly on cohesiveness. [In this space], whether you’re bringing baggage from the past, you guys are brand new students. You are from the same country. And whether you distinguish yourselves [this way], the school is not going to distinguish you guys as different, and you guys need to know that from the beginning.
For probably the first three months, we only had one female interpreter available at JVS, and she spoke Dari and Pashto. So we would speak, we would wait, and then she would speak in one language, and then she would turn to the other girls and speak in another language.
What was super cool is very quickly there were some natural leaders in the group who were really engaged and really brought it out of the rest of the kids. And they all spoke English. So they ended up interpreting and turning to the rest of the girls and interpreting for them.
At that point, we split and had the interpreter stay with the kids who needed more support. Then some of the other girls could sit and listen with our student interpreters.
Eventually the school hired a paraprofessional who speaks Pashto and Dari, as well, who’s a woman, which was amazing. She ended up coming and being one of our other interpreters. So we went from nothing to a lot in a 6-month period, but it was just growth and patience.
You mentioned that the girls didn’t want to turn this into a therapy group. But were there any discussions involving mental health?
[Mental health] discussions were very intentionally broad. It was basically like, here’s anxiety, here’s stress, and here’s how those things can come up months after you think you’re OK.
We didn’t target. We didn't say anything specific. We literally taught a session on what anxiety is and what it feels like.
We had one girl tell us—and then others chimed in—that their feeling of guilt about being able to go to school was so strong because everyone that they’re close to is still in Afghanistan. And this one girl admitted that she was struggling to concentrate, like I can’t stop thinking about my friends that can’t go to school. When I'm talking to them after school or when I’m Face Timing or video calling or on WhatsApp with them, they’re asking me how I'm doing. And I don’t know if I should tell them the truth or not.
So we talked about guilt as one of the factors. How do you live your life? How do you go to school every day, and your best friends don’t? I guess we did get specific in that category. But we didn’t sit down and have people tell us about their evacuation experience.
We ended it by reminding them that even though we were running a group with them, by trade we’re all therapists. We said, if you want to meet one-on-one, if you feel like you need to process stuff, if this is getting to the point of impacting your day-to-day life, then pull us aside and find us.
In that session, we also kind of talked about how “case management” things can factor into your mental health. So if you’re extremely worried because you’re learning English, and now you’re responsible for your entire family’s mail, food stamps, medical appointments, then come talk to us and tell us that. We can help. We can make sure your mom gets into an online English class so that she’s learning English, too. We didn't make any promises, but we did talk about that it’s not just a feeling with mental health. It’s like tangible tasks that sometimes can help.
One of the girls pulled us aside after that session and said that the main thing that was upsetting her all the time was that she was actually a senior in high school, but she didn’t have her transcript. She was so frustrated that she was a freshman again. And she asked, if I can work on getting my transcripts, can you guys get me moved? And we were like, yeah, absolutely. We'll prep the counselors; we’ll make sure everything’s ready. And she got them! And then she ended up becoming a senior this year, and I got to be the one to show her on her account that [her grade level] had switched to 12.
She said to me, the fact that I get to graduate and go to college is what I wanted. That's what’s making me feel so much better.
Were there any other challenges? Are there remaining gaps in support?
I think our biggest weakness is the boys need support, too. Just because they didn’t have the same educational gaps as the girls doesn’t mean that they don’t need something. But we really quickly realized that we could not run that group because it would not be successful with women. And we don’t have male staff who are therapists or are on the social work team. So we don’t have anybody to run the group.
It was born out of this concern that these girls were going to high school, and they’d never been to school in their lives. So that’s how we focused first. On girls.
We’re also definitely still battling girls that are really not used to going to school with boys. Some of them have gotten comfortable with it, but the majority of them just haven’t. They still don’t like it. They're not really integrating into some of the larger school opportunities.
We talked as a staff, and we talked to the girls, and we asked if we could just plug in to the school’s existing tutoring schedule. And the girls were like, no, we’re not going to go. If that’s what it is, we’re not going.
It's 1,400 students. It's really loud. It’s just intense. So they’re kind of shy and exhausted by the end of the day, and they want their own space. And they want to be able to work with an interpreter, too. So that’s why we made our own.
We had several of the older girls, ages 19-20, over the summer basically be told that they weren’t allowed to go to school anymore. It's dads making decisions, and it’s some of these girls who are married and their husband is in Afghanistan. And they are restricted on what they can do based on his word.
So when we got that information, we met with all the families to see if they would be willing to let the girls at least go to English class and then go to sewing class. And they agreed. So the ones who ended up dropping out of high school now go to a sewing program and an English program.
Do you have advice for any other agencies or organizations that might want to start a similar program?
If every agency could spend a little bit more time digging in during school enrollments. What other agencies do, and what we used to do, is literally pull the kids’ information off their travel documents and just enroll the kids. There was never a meeting with kids. There was never a family meeting.
To get the data first is where all the ideas come from. Sit with the kids and ask, what grade did you complete last? What happened when you left? What were you struggling with?
That’s how we identify kids who have mental health issues. That’s how we identify kids who need IEPs (employment plans).
I specifically made sure that when we emailed out about the girls group that we did not call it a therapy group. That we did not call it more than it was. You do not need to be a therapist to run a group like this. And so I don’t think agencies should be afraid of trying to do something. It needs to be staff that care, that are willing to ask what the kids are struggling with.
And I think getting buy-in from the kids is huge. If we were to try to start girls group for the first time this year, this upcoming January, we would have to go meet with them and ask them, what’s going on? What should we talk about? We didn’t make it up ourselves. They told us. All we had was the idea that statistically speaking, these girls probably need support. And outside of that, they drove the rest of it.
I think places might be intimidated by this because they don’t know how. But how is by leveraging the concerns of the kids and not trying to make it more than it should be. Don’t make it a trauma group. Don't make it a storytelling group where they talk about Afghanistan. Because none of the kids want to do that, and I think that’s where people could go outside of their lane of what they’re capable of doing.