Sara Wahedi

Sara Wahedi, 27, came up with the idea for Ehtesab following a suicide explosion that occurred near her home in Kabul, Afghanistan. As she searched for information after the tragedy, she wondered why a city like Kabul did not have a verified, monitored platform for emergency information—a situation that has become worse under the Taliban regime. Wahedi’s app, called Ehtesab, provides real-time alerts to Kabul residents on everything from electricity outages to explosions and gunfire. The app maps these incidents and updates them; alerts are sent straight to a user’s phone after they have been robustly verified.