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Truly global soccer balls arrived this summer at ThunderShop as a symbol of women’s empowerment in Afghanistan.
The blue-and-white Thunderbird balls, which sell for $29.99, were hand sewn by 2006 Project Artemis graduate Aziza Mohammed and her workers at the Muska Leather & Ball Making Company in Afghanistan.
Thunderbird School of Global Management launched Project Artemis in 2005 as a business training program for Afghan women. Mohammed’s Project Artemis experience included two weeks of instruction at the Thunderbird campus in Arizona, visits to U.S. businesses and ongoing mentoring from Swiss businesswoman Regula Schegg.
Thirty Afghan women have participated in the first two sessions of Project Artemis, and 15 more will start the program this fall.
Mohammed sells around 10,000 soccer balls per year and has 200 women in the ball making section of her company, which also makes leather goods. The 100 balls she sent to Thunderbird this summer are the first her company has exported to the United States, other than a few balls that Mohammed brought with her during Project Artemis.
“When Aziza was on campus for Project Artemis, people quickly snapped up the few soccer balls she brought to sell,” says Kellie Kreiser, director of Thunderbird for Good. “Since that time, there have been many people who have asked how they could buy a ball from her. Now they are in stock, and I anticipate them selling out.”
Business opportunities for Afghan women were limited during the Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001.
In 1997, Mohammed started a tutoring business out of her home in Kabul. Her courses were originally for boys and girls, but when the Taliban deprived girls of education in government schools, her classes became limited to only girls. Mohammed taught around 400 girls from first to ninth grade. In 1998 the government forced her school to close and banned girls from participating in any educational institution.
In fear for her family’s safety, Mohammed moved to Pakistan and did not return to Kabul until an interim government arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 after the U.S. occupation.
Once back in Afghanistan, Mohammed started Muska, a non-governmental organization in which she trained more than 2,000 men and women in baking, sewing, leather treatment, ball assembly, carpentry, electrical work, metalwork, plumbing, computer skills and English. Mohammed soon realized she couldn’t sell goods through an NGO, so she opened Muska Leather & Ball Making Company.
Mohammed has attended other programs since Artemis to further develop her entrepreneurial skills. She was selected to attend the Bpeace Apprentice Road Trip in Dubai, a business plan workshop that gave her hands-on tools to develop her international soccer ball business faster.
Schegg said having Thunderbird as Mohammed’s first U.S. customer allows her to learn and experiment with the export business. Further down the road, the plan is to export soccer balls to large corporate clients in Europe and the U.S. who are looking for soccer balls as promotional items for their customers or employees that support social entrepreneurship.
“Aziza is a very smart and savvy businesswoman and has built an impressive business,” Schegg says.
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