THE KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL

The Kabul Beauty School was setup in 2003 with a mission to provide women in Afghanistan access to a comprehensive vocational training program. The program taught women the skills needed to work in an array of beauty-related businesses: salons, distributorships, bookkeeping, beauty education, wellness program, birth spacing, basic nutrition, literacy program including reading and writing in both English and Dari. Graduates of the program have learned skills needed to create a substantial, self-sustainable future for themselves.

Kabul Beauty School Training Program
The program initially operated out of the ministry of Women’s Affairs and in 2004 was moved to stand-alone location in the hope to enable it to eventually become a self-sustaining school/salon.

The teaching philosophy is based on a combination of advanced beauty techniques, sanitation, and utilization of modern products that honor and respect traditional cultural beauty approaches. The curriculum is hands-on to assure that the students learn in a relatively short period of time and enable students to progress from training to practice- from learing to doing. The school environment is as much like a modern beauty salon as on would see in UAE, Europe and the United States. The learning process is designed to be a positive and enriching experience for all students.

A total of 182 Afghan women graduated from the Kabul Beauty School program.

"My Afghan sisters were robbed of beauty during the harsh years of the Taliban regime. Teenage girls like me were suppressed and forced to wear burqas which made us look like blue ghosts, but now I’ve thrown off the burqa. I was trained at the Kabul Beauty School built and run by American aid workers. Now I have my own beauty salon and also train others so they can have a career like me. This all happened after Americans came to my country."
Zakia Hussain, 23, beautician

Current Status
The Kabul Beauty School was closed in June 2007 due to safety concerns for the instructors and students. Although there are no foreseeable plans to reopen the school, the experience and lessons learned live on through the projects carried on by Oasis Rescue.

Debbie Rodriguez, the school’s director and one of the instructors, continues to develop projects to perpetuate the objectives laid out by the Kabul Beauty School. She also compiled the stories of some of the women she had the opportunity to train and get to know in the New York Times bestseller, The Kabul Beauty School, An American Woman Goes behind the Veil.