Opening a Bank Account Can Be a Bigger Deal Than You Might Think...

On Tuesday 11th March 2025, our Operations Manager Emily Dadson sent a simple WhatsApp message to the Children on the Edge team: a screenshot confirming she had finally succeeded in opening a bank account for Afghanistan Education Action (AEA). It came with the words “Happy Tuesday” and a flurry of smiling emojis.

The team replies were buzzing with congratulations, because this bank account is seriously special.

Emily had been working since 2022 to help set up a UK bank account for partners at AEA, who run three online schools for women and girls in Afghanistan, where access to education has been brutally restricted by the Taliban since their takeover in 2021.

A courageous educator in exile, when we met Angela Ghayour she had set up Herat Online School. She worked to run this voluntarily and almost single-handedly from the UK, supported only by a small admin team in Afghanistan. At the time, her school was providing education to around 3,000 students - mostly girls and women, thanks to a vast network of volunteer teachers around the globe.

It was clear Angela couldn’t do this alone. Without formal structure or funding, the future of the school was uncertain.

Children on the Edge have always partnered with bold, grassroots changemakers. So we stepped in to help Angela build a sustainable future for her work.

Emily was seconded to begin the huge task of formally registering AEA as a UK charity. This meant working with the Charity Commission, drafting governance documents, recruiting a Board of Trustees, and jumping through more than a few bureaucratic hoops.

With generous support from two of our long-term funding partners, we were able to provide Angela with a salary. This gave her the stability to focus on AEA’s mission and care for her own family. We also appointed an Education Manager to open a second online school for students who wanted access to formal qualifications, that would open the doors to further education abroad or online.

We built a website, raised funds, and rallied our amazing supporters, but one vital piece of the puzzle remained - a bank account.

Despite months of trying, Emily hit continual dead ends. She worked through endless online forms, paperwork, compliance issues, delays, and the logistical nightmare of coordinating signatures from trustees in both the UK and the USA. Every step was pretty painstaking, but she persisted!

Finally, in March 2025 the account was approved.

This milestone means that Afghanistan Education Action will be able to receive donations directly - enabling them to manage their own funding and take the next steps towards independence.

It might seem like a tiny admin detail, but for AEA, this is transformational. It means being able to grow their impact and continue delivering life-changing education to girls and women who have been robbed of their rights. It means sustainability, ownership, and the ability to build a future on their own terms.

That’s definitely something worth celebrating.