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VOL.26, NO.11
Empowering Afghan schools
Learn computers from books? While Afghanistan was under Taliban rule, from 1996 into 2001, most girls’ schools were closed. But since then, the number of girls attending school throughout Afghanistan has skyrocketed from about 5,000 to 2.4 million. There is now a new girls’ school in Khas Kunar. Prior to that, girls had been learning in makeshift schools in mosques and homes. “Education is now far better than under the Taliban, but there are still huge gaps,” Safi said. “I asked [schools in Khas Kunar], ‘can we provide books, or provide stationery for writing?’ I was told they had those things, but the schools still had no reliable electricity source.” The Safis’ organization raised enough money to install solar panels that now provide electricity for the girls’ school in the area. The Safis personally contributed
NOVEMBER 2014
I N S I D E …
PHOTO BY BARBARA RUBEN
By Barbara Ruben In the remote region of Afghanistan that Qayum Safi once called home, the odds are still stacked against children getting an education. Youngsters in mountainous Khas Kunar, which borders Pakistan, may be from families too poor to spare them each school day. In addition, spots at schools often go to children of privileged families or clans. And many girls are not given the opportunity to attend school. Add to these challenges the lack of electricity and clean water, and a location in one of Afghanistan’s least secure regions, and the obstacles can appear insurmountable. But Safi, 71, a resident of Chantilly, Va., is working to give these children in his homeland an opportunity for an education. Inspired by an Afghan proverb, “No matter where a person goes, he always comes back to the children of his ancestors,” Safi and his wife Anna recently established a nonprofit organization called Rural Afghan Schools. The organization is raising money to bring electricity and computers to educational institutions in Khas Kunar, about an hour’s drive from Jalalabad, the main city in eastern Afghanistan.
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I N N O VAT I O N S
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L E I S U R E & T R AV E L
Qayum and Anna Safi, of Chantilly, Va., recently established a nonprofit organization to provide electricity and computers to schools in rural Afghanistan, where Qayum grew up. Even today, it is difficult for boys and girls in the Khas Kunar district bordering Pakistan to get an education.
$10,000 for this first project. They are now working to raise an additional $28,000 to bring electricity to two boys’ schools. They also hope to be able to provide a computer lab. “We have a computer instructor, but no computers. He said [the students] could learn about computers from books, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” Safi said. In addition to seeking donations of funds for these rural schools, the Safis would like to find American schools that would like to become sister schools with them. “We have connections to the villages, schools and local officials in Khas Kunar,” said Safi. “My relatives teach at these
schools, and I talk with them weekly. So I can be sure what we give will end up in the right hands.”
An education abroad To obtain his own education, Safi had to leave his hometown, and eventually Afghanistan itself. While he eventually earned a PhD in education from Columbia University, as a youth he thought he might never make it past elementary school. Growing up in poverty as the eldest of three children, Safi’s first home had an open fire for cooking, and the ground floor was shared with the family’s cows, donkey, sheep and goat. Waste water drained outSee SCHOOLS, page 50
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