Afghan women and girls, denied formal education at home, help in building AI Assistants
CAMBRIDGE, UK, June 24, 2026 /24-7PressRelease/ — The Hero Awards and Afghan Women Rising are building the world’s largest “solution engine” for the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, as formulated during the Geneva plenary session. According to CIO John Toomey, each of the UN’s 169 ‘targets’ underneath the larger goals is being turned into a prompt for AI bots, starting with OpenAI’s GPTs, Gemini’s Gems, and Claude Artifacts, then progressing to full-fledged AI assistants which can update themselves continuously in evolving actionable workflows that achieve progress towards the Goals.
Doing a large share of the work right now are members of Afghan Women Rising. These are young women in Afghanistan who are denied formal education because the Taliban-led government has made it illegal for them to attend school. They build the bots online, then have in-person discussions of them to refine the prompts and add the human element.
“Having these girls design the prompts allows them to sidestep the ban against schooling,” says Program Director Amy Chang. “They get valuable experience building projects that will contribute to Sustainability both in and outside of their own country for a long while, and prepare themselves for a time in which their talents will be vital for the country’s future.”
In developing the protocols the girls have been inspired by the writings of J. Kutcher, and specifically her evocative citing of garden plant growth as a metaphor for the spiritual, emotional, and intellectual growth of young women.
When a protocol is completed, its creator is eligible to win a Hero Award. To do so it must suggest previously unknown strategies for effecting advancement of the UN Targets underneath the Goals. Successful efforts are publicized on the The Hero Awards website and in press releases.
Since the program was announced and publicized six months ago, individuals from other organizations in the Global South have requested a role, and will be included in future iterations. These include:
PARI People’s Archive of Rural India, a group devoted to the welfare of underserved populations in the Indian countryside.
Siku.org a Non-profit serving the First Nations of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland
Cybersmartafrica.org, a group of thousands of teachers and students in Senegal, preserving local cultures and improving digital literacy;
Terrastories: an open-source, community-driven application built specifically for South American and Amazonian indigenous communities to map, protect, and share their oral histories.
Winyama: an Australian indigenous group that champions the use of cultural mapping to train elders to document “Dreamtime stories” songlines, historical land use, and biological data.
June Hero Award winners:
Tara Jensen
Maria Ortiz
Herman Matsui
Wilhelmina Searles
Learn more:
https://theheroaward.substack.com
https://www.reddit.com/r/WinaHeroAward/
https://www.facebook.com/AImindsetmastery
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14292380/
Nominations & inquiries: admin@heroaward.net
UN Goals and Targets: https://sdgs.un.org/goals
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