After obtaining her master's degree, Forough became a professor of computer science at her alma mater, Herat University, where she worked for almost three years. Before founding Code to Inspire in January 2015, Forough was also a co-founder and board member of Women's Annex Foundation. Now known as Digital Citizen Fund, this organization is a non-profit that teaches girls and women digital literacy and works to provide access to technology and the internet to girls in developing countries.
Code to Inspire
Code to Inspire (CTI) opened the first all-female coding school in Afghanistan in November 2015. CTI, based in Herat, is a non-profit, one-year program. Women and girls in the program are typically between 15 and 25 years of age. Forough saw a need for an exclusively female coding school when she herself was studying and faced discrimination from male peers. She set up a crowdfunding campaign through IndieGoGo and raised over $22,000 USD to help fund the coding school. CTI has also received donations from organizations including GitHub, the Malala Fund, Google's GooglersGive programme and BitFury, as well as 20 laptop computers from Overstock.com. Forough's goal in establishing CTI was to allow girls to learn valuable technological skills in a safe and comfortable environment. Students are also able to build their resumes which can lead to greater job opportunities after graduation. More advanced students learn how to create mobile apps and educational games, while those less experienced learn the basics of coding and other technological skills, such as how to use social media.
Subjects taught at the school have included game design, web design, graphic design and full-stack programming, together with introductory blockchain material such as writing smart contracts in Solidity. CTI has also worked with the Ethereum development studio ConsenSys, which covered the cost of sending a group of students to a conference in Japan. Students and graduates have taken on remote work for technology companies abroad, including mobile app development and graphic design. By 2021 the school had graduated more than 300 students, around half of whom had gone on to find work in the field.
Forough has voiced her desire to open new branches of CTI in other cities in Afghanistan and countries throughout the Middle East and Africa.
In 2021, Forough was forced to close the school's physical location in Herat due to the Taliban's takeover of the country. To ensure classes were able to continue virtually, CTI provided laptops and internet packages to students in need. Eighty percent of students have continued to attend the school online.
During the economic crisis that followed the Taliban's return to power, CTI began delivering emergency support to students and their families in cryptocurrency. From September 2021, roughly 100 students were sent about $200 a month in BUSD, a token pegged to the value of the US dollar, which recipients traded for afghanis at local money changers. The method let the transfers work around the withdrawal caps Afghan banks had imposed on customers as well as international sanctions, and Forough said a token of fixed value was chosen over bitcoin because one unit always equals one dollar. Seventy-seven students completed a scholarship programme run by the organization; Forough said the group included what she believed were the first women in Afghanistan working as blockchain coders.
Awards
In 2016, CTI was the recipient of University of California, Berkeley CITRIS Athena Awards for Women in Technology Next Generation Engagement Award. The same year, CTI was awarded Google's RISE Award which granted the organization $25,000 USD. In 2017, CTI was recognized with Sustainia's Community Award.
