By Mehzabin Nahar Chowdhury (YES 2016-2017, Bangladesh, hosted by AFS in Thiensville, W) 

“With great privilege comes great responsibility.”

My mother had always told me that being blessed with a certain privilege means being chosen by Allah to be a leader, who has been given the responsibility of sharing that privilege with others.

Growing up I had seen my cousin who used to live with us use a desktop computer, which was my first introduction to a computer. We always had the idea that computers were to be used only by male members of the family. When he had left for UK leaving his computer behind, my sister and I started exploring it. We had absolutely no idea how to use it but it seemed absolutely fascinating. Soon, we found ourselves using the computer to listen to music, watch videos, and play games. Later down the road, we got an internet connection which felt like our first interaction with the outside world; a world beyond Sylhet; a world with YouTube, Facebook, Gmail, Google; a world that I had never seen before; a world the introduction to which gave me a sense of pride and liberation, a self identity that I carry along till this day.

Living in Sylhet, a city known as the spiritual center in the Northeast of Bangladesh, I have grown up in a traditional  environment with stringent cultural and religious norms, where the way of life even though harmonious in its own way, to an extent limits opportunities for women and young girls. I however, am a privileged individual to have had the exposure to a computer on my own, whereas a significant majority of women in Sylhet have never even used one. As an individual who has had a profound experience of growth through the use of computers, I felt it was a social responsibility to allow others to have that experience and impart the knowledge that I have gained, now that I was part of YES Alumni Bangladesh with the resources to be able to do so.

I wanted young girls to be able to feel powerful and confident, to let them know that they are not bound by the arbitrary cages of patriarchal conformity and that they too can break glass ceilings. Code for Freedom (CFF) is a project that I started as a basic computer course for young girls in the city of Sylhet, but it has become a lot more than just a basic computer course. It is an opportunity for those who could not afford to pay for a computer course although knowing how much it would increase their chances of employment; an escape for girls whose routines were defined by classes at school and coaching centers; a sense of purpose to all the girls who felt that computers were some sort of ulterior prize that is beyond their reach; an answer to all those unexplored questions of exploration about what’s beyond what their eyes see; a safe environment for young women to build a community, explore each other’s passions, push each other to be the best version of themselves and to feel the same liberation I felt when I first learned how to use a computer, but have a community of like-minded individuals to share that experience with.

Code for Freedom received an overwhelming response from 68 applicants. 30 were chosen to begin the program, most of whom were shy and anxious having never used a computer before but who have since then made their own email addresses, social media accounts, learned how to use to internet to find the answers to all of their questions, watched YouTube videos to bake a cake and posted a picture of it on Facebook, given eloquent presentations on the topic of their choice, edited pictures on Photoshop and have even realized their dream careers. All this was possible despite the fact that we only had 6 computers, 2 laptops, and only around 3 volunteers guiding them at a time which shows the amount of conviction of the volunteers and the participants. This really is the true spirit of what makes CFF successful. It is a platform that has given these girls a sense of pride and has now become a family of people who push each other to become the best version of themselves.

To see how these girls have grown since the beginning of the project has given me a true sense of accomplishment. Knowing how to use a computer may seem futile to the average person but for the girls in CFF, it was their calling, their moment to spread their wings to be able to dream and to realize those dreams with the resources they gained from CFF. What started off as a basic computer course for young girls in Sylhet has now become a family of passionate young women whose dreams know no bounds.