An all-girl robotics team from Afghanistan was rescued by a 60-year-old Oklahoma woman hoping to save more Afghan women as the Taliban takes over. After several failed attempts, the girls were flown out of Kabul to a secure location in the US.
They were assisted by Oklahoma-based Harvard graduate Allyson Reneau, who first met the girls at a science summit in Washington DC two years ago and has been in touch with the team ever since. The girls had been texting her about the situation in Afghanistan for weeks until one day, Reneau woke up with a “dreadful feeling that something was really wrong,” she told Business Insider.
Reneau, a mother of 9 daughters, said she couldn’t stop thinking about the tremendous threat that the Taliban presence posed to the future of these girls.
After hitting several roadblocks, she got in touch with a former roommate, an employee at the US Embassy in Qatar, who helped her prepare the passports and all other necessary documents for the girls.
“It’s a very narrow window of opportunity,” Reneau told NBC. “I knew that if I didn’t run through that door now — it’s now or never.”
‘We Did It’
The all-girl robotics team made headlines in 2017 when they were denied visas for a robotics competition in DC until a timely intervention by former President Donald Trump allowed them to compete.
The girls are currently sheltered in a secure location in the US and will pursue higher education. Several colleges and universities have already reached out to them with scholarships offers.
“I got a text from one of the girls that just said: ‘We did it.’ All the emotion from two weeks of work and running…just hit me all at once,” Reneau said.
Reneau is working to evacuate more Afghan women who want to pursue their dreams in the US. You can contribute to her charitable effort here.
An Oklahoma woman helped evacuate 10 girls on the Afghanistan all-girls robotics team.
"I knew … it would require some pretty powerful people, which is a little above my pay grade and my network. But I just couldn't sit on my hands and do nothing," Allyson Reneau said. pic.twitter.com/X6vMukQ83Y
— CNN International (@cnni) August 20, 2021
