By NJ Thakuria

Guwahati: For an Afghan graduate from Asian University for Women (AUW), her trip to the United States of America was ‘about getting inspiration and hope’. Last month, Mursal Hamraz, a graduate from the Chittagong based  AUW got the opportunity to visit the foreign land on a speaking tour.

Ms Hamraz, who arrived in the US on 25 September 2014, enjoyed a whirlwind two weeks of meeting people there until returning to Afghanistan on 4th October.

Reflecting on her trip, which was sponsored by the Abbott Fund, Ms Hamraz wrote, “It is not always about meeting people and coming to a consensus to do something or to create a policy or plan. It is also about getting inspiration and hope.”

Mentionable is that the AUW is an independent international private university created by a special law and established in south Bangladesh. Fund-raising and planning efforts for AUW began in 2001 and it began operations in March 2008 where the first batch of students consisted of 130 young women from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Cambodia.

The trip to the US has not only been educational and significant for me, but it has also inspired and strengthened the hope and positivity that I have had about women’s and girls’ education, particularly, at the higher level,” added Ms Hamraz.

During her visit, she had the pleasure of meeting with AUW supporters in the United States Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Office of Global Women’s Issues, United States Afghan Women’s Council, The Abbott Fund, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation etc, said an AUW statement.

Sharing her experience of US trip,  Ms Hamraz disclosed that everyone there was eager to hear about life in Afghanistan. She candidly explained that although the people of Afghanistan experience bomb blasts on a regular basis, and political instability has been an enormous obstacle to daily activities over the past several months, the normal life is still going in Afghanistan.

She was eager to express her optimism for Afghanistan’s future, saying that the new president has the chance to prove that a coalition government can bring stability, and that her country should invest in education in order to make progress towards true development.