WCW International Scholar-in-Residence Pashtana Durrani is the founder of LEARN Afghanistan, the country’s first-ever digital school network. Below is an excerpt from her forthcoming book Last to Eat, Last to Learn: My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women, co-authored with Tamara Bralo.With a collection of government stamps in hand, I now needed to secure the tribal backing for the project. Government approval merely made my NGO official, but without the tribal endorsement, my effort to educate girls would be just another import with a short shelf life.Community involvement was the only way to ensure a lasting change. Tribal life was the only constant in our lives for centuries and, if approached the right way, it didn’t have to stand in opposition to progress nor modernity. Being a closed system, it simply required a change from within, a change that was a result of reckoning, not dictated or imposed. I thought...