Mehreen Najm

The Afghan Future Fund & Mehreen Najm

The Afghan Future Fund

The Afghan Future Fund is a partnership between Schmidt Futures and the Yalda Hakim Foundation. It is a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), a US 501(c)(3) public charity.

Schmidt Futures and the Yalda Hakim Foundation launched the Afghan Future Fund after the fall of Kabul in August 2021. The Fund’s work began with coordinating emergency evacuations for at-risk Afghans, and providing humanitarian relief and resettlement, especially for Afghan women, journalists, civil society leaders, and students.

Today, AFF is on a mission to empower talented Afghans to reach their full potential. We provide charitable and educational seed grants and support more than 250 Afghan refugees and displaced students with scholarships to come to the United States and complete their studies. We also advance other socially and culturally significant efforts relating to democracy and human rights, including an Afghan Free Media Program that provides independent Afghan journalists in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan technology, tools, and resources to continue their work.

Mehreen Najm

Mehreen Najm is an Afghan web developer, a refugee, and a proud beneficiary of the Afghan Future Fund’s work. Ms. Najm was evacuated by AFF from Afghanistan, and is currently living in Albania. Through a partnership between AFF an iKons, an Albanian IT engineering and consulting company, Ms. Najm has benefited from professional development opportunities in high-tech domains, including software development.

She participated in an internship program with iKons that gave her the opportunity to develop technical skills, with the goal to empower her to reach her potential and support herself and members of the Afghan community in Albania and internationally. After six months in this program, Ms. Najm was awarded a full-time position as a Java Developer with iKons. She looks forward to a long career working with technology, and hopes to collaborate with other Afghan women hoping to break into the technology industry.

In addition to her work, Ms. Najm was honored to be selected as one of the speakers at the WomenTech Global Conference 2022. She was also a silver medal winner in the Rising Star of the Year in STEM at the WomenTech Global Awards 2021.