Episode #198 Lagniappe - Update on Ascend with Marina LeGree

<p class="p1">Marina and her Ascend board of directors were faced with insurmountable odds when Afghanistan's government fell to the Taliban. The young women of Ascend were forced to flee or go into hiding. Join us as Marina talks about evacuating and resettling 134 of the Ascend Family and how they are back to their mission of “empowering young women through mountaineering-based leadership training and community service!”</p> <p class="p1"><img style= "display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src= "https://assets.libsyn.com/secure/show/118440/Ascend_58.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></p> <p class="p1">Bio- Ascend was founded in 2014 by Marina LeGree who, while living and working in Afghanistan, saw a unique opportunity to unlock the leadership skills of young women using the mountains surrounding their homes as a classroom. The program launched in 2015 and trained twenty Afghan girls. The pilot was a success and things took off fast, with over 200 girls participating in the program from 2015-2020.</p> <p class="p1">Ascend participants became leaders in their communities, instructors to the next program participants and, in one case, <a href= "https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/nov/09/for-every-single-girl-first-afghan-woman-to-scale-mount-noshaq-hanifa-yousoufi"> <span class="s1">set a world record</span></a> as the first Afghan woman to summit Mt. Noshaq, Afghanistan’s tallest mountain.</p> <p class="p1">In 2021, Ascend built the first Women’s Sports Center in Kabul with the country’s first rock-climbing wall. The new center accommodated triple the number of girls. Unfortunately, the Taliban took control of the country in August 2021 and forced an abrupt halt to the program.</p> <p class="p1">In August 2021, Ascend made the difficult but morally right decision to focus all efforts on helping Afghan staff members, key at-risk participants and, in some cases where possible, their families. The next 14 months was non-stop activity, from securing seats on flights out of Afgha