Nila Ibrahimi – ROYA Mentorship Programme

After the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021, thousands of Afghan girls and young women arrived in Canada carrying educational ambitions but facing barriers that the system was not designed to address. General school counselling, spread thin across large student populations, cannot account for the deep transitional trauma, unfamiliarity with post-secondary pathways, and financial pressures unique to Afghan refugee students. Without specialist support, many capable young women feel overwhelmed and drop out of the academic track altogether, remaining isolated, or locked into low-wage work far below their potential.

Nila Ibrahimi is an Afghan activist and the 2024 laureate of the International Children’s Peace Prize. She is the founder of HerStory, a digital platform and foundation that amplifies the voices of Afghan girls and women through storytelling, advocacy and community building. In 2025, Nila was named a UN Global Young Leader for the SDGs, a recognition that strengthens her credibility and international reach. HerStory has grown to more than 11,000 followers on Instagram and 3,000 on LinkedIn; a single scholarship resource post reached more than 23,000 people, reflecting the scale of unmet need among Afghan women seeking educational pathways.

In 2025, Nila launched ROYA — Raise Opportunities for Afghans — as a pilot mentorship programme pairing Afghan girls with professionals experienced in the Canadian education system. Every girl who went through the pilot was admitted to a course of study at a Canadian post-secondary institution. In 2026, the programme is expanding to support ten girls across Canada.

ROYA takes a holistic approach to the barriers Afghan girls face on the road to higher education. Each mentee is paired one-to-one with an experienced mentor who helps her navigate school selection, research admissions requirements, organise paperwork and complete and review applications before submission. Mentors also act as advocates, helping students communicate directly with university admissions offices to clarify documentation requirements.

Alongside mentorship, the programme provides dedicated mental health support throughout the application cycle – group sessions where mentees share experiences and build coping strategies, and confidential one-to-one counselling for those who need it. College-readiness workshops prepare girls for the practical realities of Canadian campus life, from understanding grading systems to navigating student portals and academic advising. A centralised scholarship database guides each mentee toward external funding sources, and mentors actively help them apply.

To remove financial barriers directly, ROYA covers up to five university application fees per mentee and provides Duolingo English test coupons for students who need to demonstrate language proficiency. Upon successful enrolment, each mentee receives a tuition scholarship paid directly to the institution. The programme was reshaped after the pilot based on direct feedback from the first cohort — every component was informed by what those five girls said they needed most.

Key Moment from the Project

The most powerful evidence of ROYA’s impact is simple: every single girl who went through the pilot programme in 2025 received an offer of admission to a Canadian post-secondary institution. For young women who arrived in Canada after the fall of Kabul, carrying educational dreams alongside the weight of displacement, that admission letter is far more than an academic milestone. It is proof that the barriers between them and higher education are not insurmountable. When Nila shared the pilot results and a scholarship resource through HerStory’s platform, more than 23,000 people engaged with it – a measure of how many Afghan girls and women across Canada are looking for exactly this kind of concrete, trusted support.