There's 0 insight into what they achieved and the reporter even got the name of the European country wrong. Looks like propaganda to me.
Edit: yes, it's propaganda: "Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, resilience and climate change."
The fact that a team of girls from Afghanistan built a robot. That seems amazing, but what were the circumstances around that? An all-girl tech team from Afghanistan seems like a political statement in itself; was there a boy's team, or a mixed team, for example? Were they poor kids? Was an NGO involved and in what capacity? Did they just get together and build the robot after reading wikipedia?
The fact that they won a prize in an EU competition. Was that based purely on merit, or were there political considerations? Eg "poor girls from war-torn country should be supported", or "The NGO behind this should have their work promoted", or "Public snub/rebuke to trump's disgusting visa policies", etc. Or should we be hearing more about an imminent improvement in agricultural productivity?
The fact that it's quite a saccharine narrative, and has raised questions and suspicion. That says something both about the news system, and society, I think. It seems sad that we can't just celebrate achievement without considering (with justification) the hidden forces shaping the landscape.
Etc. Cui Bono?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/11/29/afghanist...
School girls from Afghanistan built a solar powered robot. That's news because this is something which is very hard to do in the absence of the many privileges that would make such an achievement easy.
> That they were denied entry in the US?
Yes. That too is news worthy and was covered extensively.
> Should we feel bad about it or what?
Maybe. But rather than feeling bad wouldn't it be better to celebrate this, promote this and encourage things like this until a time that such things are common place enough to not be news worthy?
Edit: turns out a five minutes search on mobile isn't enough for me to get a picture or a description of the actual robot.
This gives more detail.
The angle appears to be "overcame adversity" but we don't learn where they worked on the project, what facilities they had, nor seemingly anything about the engineering other than the rules of the two competitions ...
Meh.
[Seems like a good personal achievement, I wouldn't belittle that, like get them up in school assembly, show them in the local paper, write about them in your family Christmas missive. But aside from the pretty unexceptional visa refusal it's a non-story IMO.]
> The team’s winning entry was a solar-powered robot that would help small farmers carry out tasks including seeding and cutting crops like wheat
Apart from the general idea, what was created?
Here's a more detailed article from the NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/world/afghanistan-girls-r...
> The team, which had only two weeks to build its robot for the event because a shipment of parts was delayed, won a silver medal for courageous achievement.
Courageous achievement is good politics, but not necessarily good engineering.
Here's an article from NPR:
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/07/22/538088825/what-re...
> The winner was chosen by the thousands of spectators who attended the event.
They mention what the robot actually does:
> Every team arrived with a robot in tow, each built with the exact same components, but designed, engineered and programmed differently. The goal: to gobble up and sort blue and orange plastic balls representing clean water and contaminated water.
> The Afghan team's consolation prize: a medal for "courageous achievement" and knowing that they placed much higher than countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and the U.S.
- - -
So my takeaway is that apart from facing all of the challenges that come with delayed shipments and denied VISAs, the girls managed to build a robot out of the standard parts list.
Their robot was voted on by thousands of attendees, and they placed higher than teams from developed countries like Canada, the UK, and the US.
What's the actual news? Not much, this is a fluff story. But it means something that a team of Afghan girls even made it to competition, much less built something that could legitimately outcompete more developed teams.
In response to the guy down here (I can't post anymore): the fact that they "won a prize", as shown in the title of this post, is highly misleading, when it was just a consolation prize. THe takeaway of these news is "look at everything the US is missing for not opening their borders", and this being a consolation prize, the US is simply missing nothing. So the entire thing is a fabrication.
The girls won a prize for overcoming adversity, and they arguably built a better robot than teams that didn't have much adversity to overcome. That's not nothing.
But at the same time articles like this one leave me with a feeling of pandering and head-patting.
We all like to see groups of underdogs do impressive things.
If the article were about what an outlier their robot is because it's so good, or what an outlier the team is because they pulled off a feat of engineering against all odds, then I'd be cheering along with everyone else.
But mainly the article is: "these girls faced far more adversity than most anyone else, but still managed to perform adequately."
That's something for them to be proud of personally, and for Afghanistan to be proud of nationally.
At the same time, if the competition were adjudicated in a double-blind way, would they have still beat out other teams?
There's nothing wrong in discussing whether that's a relevant question.
On another note, I'm surprised I got downvoted when adding background information to the discussion.
Absolutely agree. I have lived in Afghanistan for two years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/11/29/afghanist...
There are multiple angles on this story and your border is the least relevant part of it. Move on.
The insinuation that Forbes is not part of the propaganda conspiracy is absurd. This is exactly what it looks like when an NGO is peddling a narrative.
Second: you don't know what the criteria for giving the price out is. What if the idea of the prize is to encourage kids to get into tech? Who would benefit more, some kid who went to a Palo Alto school and whose parents work at Google and Apple, or some kid from a developing nation with not nearly as many resources?
It's very cavalier - and very disturbing - to assume all you are assuming just because they are Afghan. Have you ever wondered if you'd had the same concerns if they came from -say - Brazil?
Do we know that?
I have some experience in this area, I don't live in a "privileged" country, and I find there is at least some truth to the adage "Aid, is poor people in rich countries, giving to rich people in poor countries".
Good for them they've achieved this, whether they were privileged, assisted (because they were underprivileged?), untouchables from broken families, or whatever, or not, but let's not jump to conclusions about the actual backstory.