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Dear Reader,
A little over a year ago, we interviewed and hired Noor, an 18-year-old woman who grew up in Swat Valley Pakistan, known internationally as the region where global activist Nobel prize-winner Malala was shot for her efforts to get educated. Noor grew up as Malala's neighbor in one of the most beautiful parts of the world that unfortunately had been taken over by extremism. Noor explained to me that she was learning engineering and wanted a low-profile place to work. She told me that Odetta was quite famous in her village, as it was one of the few places designed around stealth employment for women in regions where this matters.
In response to a standard performance review, Noor shared this with us, and it stopped us all in our tracks. "It has been more than a year that I am working for Odetta now and I would like to share how this company has overall changed me as a person. Me being someone who has been living all my life away from the city-side, with restrictions on most of the things around me. I had never imagined myself as a working-earning lady. This past year with Odetta and seeing every Odettian (200+ employees with their 200+ life stories) has made me learn so much about life that I wasn't aware of before. How people have worked hard to achieve so much in life. Odetta is not just an earning platform and definitely, it's no simple 9 to 5; it's a part of you, becomes your family. Overall my feedback for Odetta is that it has made me a super confident free woman, who can now easily talk, communicate right/wrong, can take stands for herself (if needed), and has defined me and above all made me an empowered woman. There's so much more that I have to learn, but thank you for giving me an amazing start to my new life."
Swat Valley is no longer occupied by the Taliban; and Noor’s message brings us hope. Just ten days after receiving Noor’s message, however, we learned about the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. While we do not have any Odettians in Afghanistan, there are millions of women - potential Odettians - whose basic liberties are at risk. We stand with them, we support the journalists risking their lives, and the organizations(1) remaining in the country to protect and support female talent.
And above all, we recommit to our vision of deeper impact so that one day this cycle of trauma will be a distant memory. Odetta’s deeper purpose is to help thousands of women by offering them a space where they experience empowerment with love.
Katharine
(1) We stand with Roya Mahboob (All Girls Afghan Robotics Team), Fereshteh Forough (Afghan Female Coders), Womanity (Girls Can Code), and the International Red Cross
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