Valedictorian Honors Afghan Girls

by Dereen Shirnekhi

Assadi with her family, including mom Homa and dad Mohammad Ali, after Metro’s graduation ceremony.

A full house in Fair Haven School’s auditorium.

As Metropolitan Business Academy valedictorian Razia Assadi looked out over a full auditorium while giving her graduation speech Tuesday, she thought of the girls in her home country of Afghanistan who haven’t been afforded the same opportunities as her.

“Do you know that there are places in this world where a girl can have perfect grades, limitless ambition, and dreams larger than herself, yet still be denied the opportunity to pursue them?” Assadi asked her peers and their families at the start of her speech. “For millions of girls, it is not a story. It is not a mere headline, nor is it a distant issue. It is their reality.”

“Tonight, however,” she continued, “I stand before you in a very different reality.”

Assadi came to the United States from Afghanistan with her family in 2015, when she was 8 years old, during a period of increased violence from the Taliban. On Tuesday, she graduated from Metropolitan Business Academy alongside her peers at a ceremony held in the auditorium of Fair Haven School.

Assadi’s mother, Homa Assadi, became involved in 2016 with local food nonprofit CitySeed’s Sanctuary Kitchen program, which provides culinary training for immigrants and refugees. She was connected through Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS) volunteer Donna Golden. Homa began working at Sanctuary Kitchen in 2018 and now serves as a supervisor.

“I’m so happy,” Homa said about her daughter’s graduation on Tuesday. “I’m so proud of her.”

Both of them, she said, have worked hard for this moment.

Razia Assadi, who is of the Hazara ethnic group, said that she is the product of sacrifice. When people hear “Afghanistan,” she said during her speech, they often think of conflict.

“I think of my grandmother waking before sunrise to prepare fresh naan,” she said. “I think of neighbors carrying fresh food to one another without being asked.”

She thinks about resilience. She thinks of community.

And, she said, she thinks of girls.

“Girls with dreams so vivid they can describe them in perfect detail,” she said. “Girls who imagine futures for themselves and work tirelessly toward them.”

Assadi said the fact that so many girls haven’t had the same opportunities and resources that she had has shaped not only her approach to education, but also to responsibility.

“I carry it with me every time I enter a classroom,” she said. “Every time I complete an assignment. Every question I ask.”

At one point during her speech, Assadi asked her parents to stand in the crowd, prompting cheers from attendees and her fellow graduates. She spoke of her parents’ sacrifices and the challenge of navigating an unfamiliar country to provide their children with opportunities.

“Mom. Dad,” she said, “You may look at your lives and focus on what you left behind. I look at your lives and see what you built.”

Homa and Assadi’s little brother in the crowd during her speech.

In addition to her family, Assadi was joined for her graduation by now-retired ESL teacher Mary Lou DiPaola, who had taught Assadi when she arrived at Truman School from Afghanistan in second grade.

“She was so sweet and adorable and kind and nervous,” DiPaola recalled. She also taught Assadi’s younger sister, and when the kids moved to Nathan Hale School after a few years, DiPaola said she kept in touch with the family.

“She’s worked so hard,” she said about Assadi, “and she deserves it.”

CitySeed Executive Director and Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller also attended Assadi’s graduation on Tuesday. “Razia’s story is a reminder that brilliance is all around us and our collective responsibility is to provide the spaces where it can take root and take flight,” she said. “Her path and the paths of her parents and siblings exemplifies what New Haven and Connecticut and our country are all about.”

After receiving her diploma, Assadi told the Independent, “I would say I’m proud of myself because I have my family, who care deeply about me.” She is also grateful for her teachers.

Assadi remembered being unsure what to do or what the rules were in the classroom on the first day of school, when she first came to the United States. She had more free time and flexibility than she had had in her school in Afghanistan.

Now, after finishing high school at the top of her class, she plans to attend Columbia University in New York in the fall.

Assadi wants to study neuroscience and philosophy, largely because her brother has a neurological disability that prevents him from walking or talking. She said as a kid, she always wondered why that was the case. As the eldest child, she often carried him through their mountainous village in Afghanistan.

Assadi and her family had visited New York recently and Assadi said she liked it. “It was so lively,” she said, “even at 3 a.m.!”

See below for Razia Assadi’s full graduation speech.

Razia’s full graduation speech

Assadi with her mom and sister after arriving in the U.S. Credit: Donna Golden photo