What an evening at the Scituate Mill Wharf Cinema on September 14, 2016!
The Rotary Club of Scituate, MA had sponsored the screening of Principle Pictures – Founder Beth Murphy’s film “What Tomorrow Brings”. The film recounts the successful story of Duxbury Rotarian Razia Jan’s founding of an all girls school in the district of Deh’Subz, in Afghanistan in 2008 with the help of Rotary and other NGOs (and this included the Rotary Club of Scituate) during a time when girls in Afghanistan were not to have any academic education. The story in the film follows the challenges the girls attending school faced when they signed up as K12 students until they become the first graduates in 2015, not only within the wider society of Afghanistan but also within their own families, as these families too were coping with adjusting to centuries old traditions that kept girls from getting a chance to receive an education enabling them to lead independent lives.
After the screening Razia Jan made herself available to the audience, that included many Scituate and South Shore residents, to a very lively Q&A that could have gone on forever.
We also heard that evening of a second school, this time a school for boys and girls, in the same area of Afghanistan that is named in honor of fallen soldier Sgt. Michael J. Kelly of Scituate, MA, son of Joeseph and Karen Kelly of Scituate. This school is being actively financially supported by the Rotary Club of Scituate, MA ,which allowed the school to increase its budget from one educator to four teachers. Razia Jan volunteers also as conduit between the Rotary Club of Scituate, MA and that school.
Many Rotarians and Scituate citizens have signed up for sponsorship of students at Razia Jan’s school. $300 pays for all the school needs for one year. Sponsorships can be made through “Razia’s Ray of Hope Foundation”, P.O. Box 81052, Wellesley, MA 02481.
Yours in Rotary,
Dietrich Bilger, Secretary
