Greetings!  

As you know, The Taliban are divided on whether Afghan girls should be educated above the sixth grade. In most of the country there are no classes for girls above the sixth grade. There is pressure from international donors for girls to have equal access to an education. Prior to the Taliban takeover, the central government received 70% of its budget from international donors. The Taliban want/need that support. No one knows what the Taliban will ultimately decide or be able to afford. 

When girls were turned back from the schools this February, our libraries became extremely important to the 1,000 plus girls using them daily. Many of them are beyond the sixth grade. I asked Mujeeb, our program director, whether we could improve what was stored in our library computers. I received this email from him recently;

"We worked on this for three whole weeks

Fortunately, we now have a complete and standard set of school lesson videos.

The first part of the videos include the contents of the first to sixth grades (Dari, math, life skills...)

The second part of the videos contains the main themes from the seventh to the twelfth grade, which are also called main themes, ( Arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, alchemy....) and these are the keys to getting into universities and higher education. 

This means that students who have graduated from school and want to continue their studies at universities can prepare for the entrance exam by watching these videos. We call it entrance exam preparation, which is also taught in private courses that cost up to $60 per month.

The third part of the videos is self-taught English lessons from elementary level to TOEFL level including TOEFL training.

The fourth part of the videos includes computer training ICT and ICDL ( Windows, office package....) and other scientific topics

The total size of these videos is 405 GB, which we stored on external hard disks, each with a capacity of 500 GB."

We are loading flash drives with the videos Mujeeb described. The flash drives can be checked out from our libraries and taken home. We will download whatever we have to flash drives provided by families at no cost to them. We may also be able to budget providing flash drives and computers to family that can not afford them. We'll know by the end of the year. That's when most donations are made.

A longtime supporter and friend is going to China soon and offered to determine the feasibility and cost of buying laptops and flash drives in China and having them shipped to us in Kabul. She will also let friends and others know we're looking for laptops. It's surprising how many donated computers we received when we did the same.

The "where there's a will there's a way" idiom has applied to our work in Afghanistan for 19 years. Providing access to an education from and in homes is very promising.

Budd

  

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