A year after being distinguished as one of 15 Girls Leading Change by First Lady Jill Biden, Alexandria’s Zahra Rahimi just returned to the White House.
The 18-year-old Rahimi says that being named to the group motivates her, and that she briefly spoke with the First Lady after the announcement of this year’s cohort.
“We all spoke with her and she gave us great and powerful words, and told us to continue our work,” Rahimi said. “It was really great to reunite with the girls in my cohort from last year, and to see the incredible young women from this year’s cohort was very powerful and very good opportunity to see the new girls and their hard working class by the White House.”
At the White House, Rahimi also took a photo of President Joe Biden, who observed the Girls Leading Change event from a distance.
“Being in the cohort inspired and motivated me to continue working, to keep moving forward,” Rahimi said.
The Alexandria City High School graduate now attends William & Mary, and recently launched a “secret” school for girls in Afghanistan.
The website for the nonprofit Zahra Insight Academy will launch in December, Rahimi said, and in the meantime donors can reach out via Instagram. The identities of the students and teachers are secret.
“We have 20 young Afghan girls students who are able to get education because they are denied to their rights to education by the government in Afghanistan,” Rahimi said. “I am helping to supporting them with my nonprofit, and I’m busy with that while I’m in college.”
Rahimi didn’t speak English when she and her family emigrated to the U.S. in 2019. She ended up co-creating an English literacy program for dozens of refugee children with Northern Virginia Resettling Afghan Families Together.
Rahimi wants to run for Congress someday, and spent the summer interning with City Council Member Canek Aguirre and U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-8).
She was the student representative on the School Board her senior year at Alexandria City High School. She also made a film, “Desperate,” a documentary about Afghan students who fled their home country after the Taliban takeover in 2021. The film will premier later this week at the All American High School Film Festival at AMC Theatres in New York City’s Times Square.
