• Desperate Afghans are struggling to withdraw cash as the economy crumbles under the Taliban.
• The founder of a coding school for Afghan women told Insider that her students’ families were going hungry.
• She devised an innovative solution — sending emergency payments to them in the form of crypto.

Afghanistan’s economic collapse due to US sanctions and a shortage of cash as the Taliban chokes of bank withdrawals means millions of people can’t afford to buy food or medicine. 

But Fereshteh Forough, a New Hampshire-based Afghan social activist and founder of Code to Inspire, has devised an inventive workaround to help support needy students at her Herat coding school.

She’s sending them cryptocurrency.

Forough set up the Code to Inspire school in Herat, Afghanistan, in 2015, to educate the city’s young women about computer programming and becoming financially independent.

It was a success. Forough told Insider that more than 350 female students learned how to code, and close to 65% of graduates found jobs in their communities — many becoming their household’s sole earner