Charmaghz was founded in 2018 by Afghan child rights activist Freshta Karim. It began with an old public bus that was transformed into the country’s first colorful mobile library, promoting literacy, peacebuilding, and critical thinking among children. Over the next seven years, this grew into a network of 17 Mobile Libraries, including buses and vans, that brought books and learning into communities across Kabul, reaching over 1.1 million visits from children.
By 2025, however, growing operational challenges made it no longer feasible to continue running the Mobile Libraries. While this chapter came to a close, the need to support Afghan children, especially girls, had only become more urgent.
Today, Afghanistan remains the only country in the world where girls are officially banned from attending school past the 6th grade, limiting not only their access to education but also their pathways to employment, economic independence, and the ability to shape their own futures.
In response to this urgent gap, Charmaghz provides quality learning pathways that enable girls to shape their own futures. From what started eight years ago as a small project to cultivate children’s love of reading in a little blue bus–our first Mobile Library– will now stretch across Afghanistan and into the homes of girls and young women, who will become the heartbeat of a rising Afghanistan.
The name Charmaghz, meaning “four brains” in Farsi, reflects the belief that learning expands human potential. As our work grows and adapts to changing realities, that belief continues to guide everything we do.
