School via Satellite: Educating Girls in Afghanistan and Beyond

Talks on Tuesdays: Real lectures in your favourite venues. 45-min + Q&A with Christopher Taylor Talks on Tuesdays is a live event series bringing big ideas, real experts, and curious minds together - at your favourite local venues. Think thought-provoking lectures, audience questions, and post-talk mingling over drinks and dinner. This isn’t a uni lecture. It’s a social, intelligent night out.Come alone or with friends, leave with something to talk about. Event Schedule: 6.30pm Arrival & Doors Open 7pm Lecture Starts 7.45pm Q&A 8pm Talk Concludes 8.30pm Event Closes. *Please arrive close to 6.30pm A La Carte menu and full bar available throughout the night - pay as you go. Your Topic: School via satellite: bringing education to girls in Afghanistan and other disempowered communities. A few years ago, I found myself thinking about students who had ability, ambition and motivation, but no practical pathway into education due to the environment they lived in. That is where the idea began: what if we could take education to the learner, rather than expect the learner to reach the institution?” This question provided the launchpad for The Institute for Equity in International Education - or EquityEd - a social enterprise founded in Melbourne with the deliberately unglamorous ambition to build an education institution that actually reaches people who miss out due to poverty, gender, geopolitics or displacement. In this inspiring talk, EquityEd founder, Christopher Taylor walks us through his founding idea and the real-world barriers he encountered - cultural, infrastructural, financial, and structural - in setting up as a social enterprise. He will explain how EquityEd’s mobile-first technology platform reaches learners without laptops or reliable internet, and why education delivered by solar-powered satellite is less a novelty and more a necessity. The talk also explores the larger question Christopher is researching in his PhD studies: Does education deliver economic empowerment across the supply chain? And if not, how can it be used as an enabler? Christopher will examines how people at the grassroots shift from passive price-takers to active economic agents, and what that means for educational investment in low-income contexts. Your Speaker: Christopher Taylor is the founder of the Institute for Equity in International Education (EquityEd) and a PhD researcher examining education as an enabler of economic empowerment. His work spans international development, social enterprise, and educational technology, with a focus on communities in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Australasia.