Sveto Muhammad Ishoq challenges the status quo of what it means to be an Afghan woman

Sveto and I first met at a networking event in Tsinghua University. She was then a student scholar (the first Afghan female student scholar) under the prestigious Schwarzman College program at Tsinghua. We exchanged contacts at the event and it took us months before we finally met up again at Khan Baba, a restaurant in Beijing serving yummy-licious South Asian cuisine. As we savoured the various curries and nan bread, we spoke casually on different topics from the experience of growing up to our favourite music and movies. It was only our second meeting and Sveto already felt to me like a close secondary school friend whom I had grown up with – our conversations peppered with lots of laughs and silly giggles.  

A few months passed before I heard again from Sveto. This time she invited me to an event that she was going to speak at – an initiative organised by the SCOLAR Network in Beijing called ‘Ladies Circle’. In that event Sveto spoke about her passion and the brave and fearless women of her motherland, Afghanistan. It was then that I realised that behind this lady with a jovial and easy-going demeanour was also a determined and mission-driven individual who was out to challenge the status quo of what it means to be an Afghan woman. 

I recently re-connected with Sveto to talk about two of her passion projects.  She is a budding fashion entrepreneur running a start-up called Ayat Modest Clothes as well as the founder of Chadari Project, a storytelling platform to showcase stories of Afghan women across the globe.

LoP: Thanks for joining us on Lens Of Passion! To begin, please share with us what the word “passion” mean to you in your mother tongue, and how you would describe your passion. 
Sveto Muhammad Ishoq: In my mother tongue – we say aloqa (in Dari language) – it means interest. To me passion can mean a few things, such as being selfless, caring about social justice, and empowering and helping others to find their own passion. 

My passion is my country and the women of my country. I would describe myself as a patriot and women’s rights activist. I care about bringing positive changes to my community or as people say, making the world a better place to live. 

What inspired you to begin your journey of pursuing women’s rights? 
Although I am from Afghanistan, I grew up in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia, so I didn’t see a lot of Afghan women and had no idea how they were like. There was a lot of negative information about women in Afghanistan, such as the lack of educational opportunities for girls, domestic violence that women face, or stories of women facing street harassment when they walk down the streets, etc. But when I moved to Afghanistan during middle school, I met different Afghan women and heard their stories. I realised the women that I met are powerful, brave, and inspiring in their own ways. That was how I began working in the social justice sector for various NGOs, children and women’s rights groups in Afghanistan. Some projects I worked on include the Afghan Women Writing Project in where I worked with women from 34 provinces of Afghanistan, and the Everywoman Treaty in which I managed volunteers from around the world to support the crucial work of the first-ever International Treaty on violence against women. 

Another turning point for me was when I spent one year in Schwarzman College in Beijing doing my master’s program back in 2018 and learnt about how people perceived my country and women of my country. The most common topics that people would ask are about war and the Taliban, or child marriages, and they would tell me that they felt I was oppressed. I was frustrated that they wouldn’t see me for who I am, but as someone who needed their pity or sympathy. I realised that it was so important to share how there is so much more to Afghan women than what is portrayed in the media. 

In a few lines, how would you describe what an Afghan woman is? 
To me, an Afghan woman is a real hero who is strong, powerful, resilient, and brave. One thing specific about women in Afghanistan is that they are problem-solvers and leaders. They have limited resources, but they always try to make the best of them. Our country has experienced 40 years of war and women haven’t been given opportunities. Many women lost their husbands in war and are the sole breadwinner of their families. Despite being illiterate or not having skills, these women do their best to provide for their family (of typically 6-8 children). They choose to sacrifice themselves and their lives for their children, doing jobs like making bread in shops, sewing or making clothes or other handicrafts and embroidery.  

An example of a woman I know is one of my close relatives that I met when I moved back to Afghanistan. Her husband was addicted to drugs and she was the breadwinner of her family with 6 children to take care of. She would leave her home early in the morning and would bake bread till late evening. Her older daughter did not go to school and remained illiterate because she had to take care of her siblings who were all younger than her. These are two of the hundreds of stories of brave and resilient Afghan women who face so many challenges daily, yet they remain strong and continue to fight. To me – the Afghan women are true heroes! 

Let’s talk about your personal journey and the two main passion projects you’re working on. Tell us more about Ayat Modest Clothes.  
Ayat Modest Clothes is a social enterprise based in Kabul and our mission is to provide fashionable and high-quality modest clothing at fair prices to the women in Afghanistan. We employ illiterate Afghan women and aim to help them become economically independent. 

My classmate and I started this when we were still in our last year of university studying business and we were exploring options that could help both women and the economy in Afghanistan. It was my classmate who raised this idea and I loved it, so we started creating clothing designs and trained illiterate women to be professional tailors who could manufacture clothes from home.  

What would you say is unique about your clothing brand? 
Actually most of the modest clothes in Afghanistan come from countries like China and India, or Saudi Arabia and Iran. The limitation with clothing from China and India is that they tend to be with no sleeve or short length and do not consider the cultural values we have in our country – so we end up having to put layers to cover up which is not ideal (especially the summer when it is 35 degrees temperature in Kabul!). The abayas (Islamic clothing with long dresses and sleeves) from Iran and Saudi Arabia also tend to be expensive. We felt that there was a niche or demand for more modest clothing options, so we decided to do something that can provide affordable clothing that are of good quality and with colourful designs. 

What is the bigger vision for your project and what do you hope to achieve, say, 3 years from now? 
We started Ayat Modest Clothes in 2018 and are still in the early stage of our start-up (with our shop based mainly online). We have been making slower progress as I spent one year in China doing my master’s and could not work on the project actively. We also only recently reopened operations due to the lockdown in Kabul in the first half of the year. But our long term vision for Ayat Modest Clothes is to build an all-women team for our start-up (including the clothing designers, tailors, and delivery people) as well as to export our clothing to other countries. 

We have had the opportunity to pitch the idea for our start-up at various entrepreneurial events such as Startup Weekend Kabul and have received positive feedback so far. We are presently exploring opportunities to expand our team and to build partnerships with people in other Muslim countries to market our products.  

 Let’s move on to talk about your second passion project – Chadari project. You mentioned that this was something that you started while you were on lockdown in Kabul earlier this year? 
So the quarantine here started in March 2020 and was supposed to last for three weeks but then it was extended, so I had time to think about doing something more relating to Afghan’s women issues, which I love. I decided to start a storytelling platform to share the stories of Afghan women, beginning with COVID-19 stories and how it’s affecting their lives. It was a step-by-step process of creating a website, making a logo, and doing a call for submissions of Covid-19 stories, and I really enjoyed every experience of it. I began this journey alone in April and now we have a team of over 50 volunteers from around the world who work on different roles such as writing, translating, editing and event management. 

Why the name Chadari? 
So the literal meaning for Chadari is ‘blue burqa’ in Dari, one of our native languages in Afghanistan. Whenever you say ‘Afghan women’ that’s what people immediately imagine – a woman with a blue burqa sitting on the street. That is the biggest stereotype about Afghan women. I have had people saying to me, say “you don’t look Afghan”, so I think that’s what they have imagined. 

The purpose of Chadari project is to let people know that women in Afghanistan come from different diverse sets of backgrounds – educated, uneducated, with blue burqa or without, and they have different experiences. In my perspective, they are all powerful, brave and have amazing stories to share with the world, so I hope that Chadari can help to eliminate these stereotypes against Afghan women.  

What kind of stories have you shared so far? 
As earlier mentioned, we started with Covid-19 stories, but we’ve since expanded to include stories of women and girls who survived terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. In addition to writing story articles, we’ve also held a few online storytelling events gathering Afghan women from around the world to share their stories on Zoom, including Afghan women in Afghanistan, China, US and Russia. I realised how valuable these stories were when at the end of our first online session, we had so many questions from the non-Afghan attendees who were interested in hearing more. I hope to expand the opportunities, platforms, and spaces for Afghan women to speak about their lives and their experiences. 

What is the next big step for the Chadari project? 
We recently started an online public speaking course called ‘Force Your Fear’ for Afghan youth aged 18-30. Public speaking is an important skill that is currently not taught in schools in Afghanistan. We hope to help high school students and university students realise their full potential through public speaking and to train them to become confident in the future as they pursue different things – whether for grad schools, interviews or applying for jobs, etc.

Can you share with us a bit about your journey of how you became confident in public speaking? 
To be honest like any Afghan girl I was shy in my school years. The education system in Afghanistan trains students to sit and listen to the teachers during lectures rather than to participate, which is a big problem. It was only when I took a public speaking course during my undergraduate studies at the American University of Afghanistan that I became more comfortable in speaking up. 

I still remember the first and last speech that I gave at university. My first speech was a 2-minutes speech about my favourite celebrity. I remember being so stressed out about it and found it difficult to even look at my classmates in the eye. My last speech was reciting a 5-minutes speech given by Malalai Yousoufai. I felt that I did a good job of it because she and I have similar values and that I genuinely care about the things that she said in her speech. 

I gradually fell in love with public speaking and co-founded a club called University Success Club, which teaches different skills to freshmen, including public speaking. Now I have found a new passion in sharing my passion projects to motivate people, especially Afghan youths. The central message that I give to Afghan youths through my various talks is that they can go out their comfort zones and to recognise how that is important for their personal growth.  

We have one last question for you before we finish the interview. If you are invited one day to give a speech to a group of 500 young female students in Afghanistan, what would you say to them? 
I would say that first of all, believe in yourselves and never give up on your dreams. Keep fighting until you achieve your dreams. I would also like to say that our country is our responsibility and we have a duty to represent it well. We have to be the ambassadors of Afghanistan through our actions, talks and behaviour and we should always keep that in mind, especially when we go out of the country. 

It was great hearing you share about your passion projects. Is there anyone that you’d be keen to hear from or to work with to support you on your current projects? 
For Ayat Modest Clothes, we are looking for investors who can help us to expand our brand beyond Kabul and to other provinces like Mazar first. Once we are well-established in the country, we will also consider expanding abroad as we want to showcase Afghan-designed modest clothes to other countries as well.

For the Chadari project, we’re always looking for more writers, editors and translators (fluent in Pashto, Dari and/or English) who can help to produce written content and to proofread and edit our articles. We’re also considering to do a video series of Afghan women’s stories called ‘Chadari Talk’ so it’d be great if any video editors would like to connect with us as well! 

Thanks for reading this article, and we’d love to hear from you in the comment section!

Tell us one female figure that you know (personally or not) who is doing something awesome in this world.

You can find information on Ayat Modest Clothes at

https://www.ayatclothing.com/about.html

https://www.instagram.com/ayat_clothing/

https://www.facebook.com/ayatclothingbrand/

You can find information on Chadari Project at

http://www.chadariproject.com

https://www.instagram.com/chadariproject/

https://twitter.com/chadariproject?lang=en

https://www.facebook.com/chadariproject