Here are some of the photos taken during their visit.

Joining our forum is easy! Just click here and you will be taken to the registration page. All you need to do is choose a user name and password and provide an e-mail address, which will remain anonymous. No other information is needed, but you can add it if you wish.

Once you’re registered, you can go to the forum to ask questions about the project, education, or anything else you’d like. We can also help you find the information that you’re looking for on the Internet. We’d like to learn more about the people who are using the computers at the ACCC, such as what interests you, what you’d like to learn more about, and what it’s like to live in Kandahar.

We also hope that our donors and supporters will visit the forum and contribute to the discussions, so that we can be part of each other’s community. The forum is also a great place to discuss the posts you see on theafghanschool.org in greater detail.

Thanks again, and please send an e-mail to theafghanschool@hotmail.com if you have any questions on how to use the forum.

Fariba Ahmadi meets with Ehsan

Fariba Ahmadi visits the students of the ACCC

Fariba Ahmadi visits the students of the ACCC

It is the intention of the staff and volunteers working at the Afghan School Project and with the ACCC to promote equal opportunities for all people in Kandahar, including access to education and the Internet in a safe and supportive environment.

- Ryan

Consider, for instance, the problem of providing access to safe drinking water to rural Afghan communities. According to information from the United Nations, only 11% of Afghans living in the countryside have access to safe drinking water. Safe drinking water has a significant impact on health, including life expectancy, quality of life and infant mortality rates.

Conventional solutions to this problem, such as chlorination or mechanical filtration, are difficult to implement due to the cost of the equipment and supplies required, the maintenance of the equipment and the complex training required to properly implement these methods. As a result of the need for simple yet effective methods of purification, new techniques have been developed that dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of producing safe drinking water.

One such method is SODIS, or Solar Water Disinfection, a method that uses commonly available water bottles and exposure to sunlight to effectively kill bacteria and other micro-organisms that can cause disease. This method has been successfully tested in a number of countries, including Pakistan and Uzbekistan. In the case of projects in these two countries, the SODIS method reduced water-borne diseases by approximatley 50%. With proper light-weight water bottles and by following the simple procedures outlined on the SODIS website, this method could dramatically improve the health of rural Afghans at minimal cost.

This is but one example of the potential benefits of education, including access to skilled teachers and the Internet.

To view the report in full, please click here.

World Public Opinion is a publication of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, a non-profit research program affiliated with the University of Maryland, College Park.

What do you think the significance is of this report? To join the discussion, please visit us in our forum.

Program Description

The Afghan-Canadian Community Center is seeking funding to provide training programs to government employees who use computers at government institutions in Kandahar. The program’s goal is to teach Afghan government staff successful and effective management skills. The employees will be trained by IT experts hired for the courses by the Afghan-Canadian Community Center.

The proposed training period is four months per course. It is our goal to run three training cycles during the twelve month period, once funding has been received.

Implementation

This program will provide computer literacy training to 40 trainees in Kandahar. Fifty percent of the students will be women. The trainees will be selected among candidates submitted by Provincial Government offices and local representatives of Government of Afghanistan (GoA) ministries and other stakeholders of the Afghan-Canadian Community Center.

Course Description

This course will introduce the use of Information and Communication Technologies in government institutions within fast changing IT environment. The employees will receive practical instruction in the use of MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Outlook).

They will also receive introductory and ‘on the job’ training in the operating system and its applications in a wireless network environment, which will help them to understand and use a computer effectively. Furthermore, they will have the chance to experience the different applications and usage of the Internet (Web browsing, HTML, FTP, blogs, e-mail, Macromedia Flash, Chat, VOIP) and will use these applications to reach their objectives in this and other courses.

From the very beginning, the students will work with virtual tools (Intranets, WebCast, Instant Messenger, Webmail), which will allow them to stay in contact with the lecturers at all times and prepare them for today’s work environment. These systems will be provided by the teachers. Whenever possible, the instructors will try to include other topics and integrate the newly learned techniques and their applications to other subjects.

Course Goals

Upon completion of the course, the employees will be expected to:

1. Understand the different software and hardware components of today’s ICT institutional & business environments.

2. Be able to create professional presentations, documents, reports, charts, calculations, simple desktop publishing and blogs using the appropriate software.

3. Analyse information and use the Internet for research and development purposes.

4. Understand how ICT can help today’s institutions and businesses support a global, virtual, immediate and knowledge-supporting work environment.

5. Feel comfortable and have fun with ICT!

Course Content

· Introduction to today’s role of Information and Communication Technologies within today’s institutional and economic environment.

· Setting up virtual work environment – Hotmail, MSN “buddies”, virtual office access, WebCast

· Microsoft Excel – Worksheet, calculations, and charts

· Microsoft PowerPoint – Presentations

· Microsoft Word – Word and Document processing

· Internet Explorer and its applications – Mail, search engines, HTML, WebBlog

· Collaboration tools – Web Collaborator, Skype, Webcast, Chat and others

· Chat and Instant Messenger

· WebCast with Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP)

Teaching and Learning Strategies

The entire course will be presented via lectures. The employees will be encouraged to participate in classroom training. The instructor will act as a guide to help the students acquire knowledge and experience through practical experience and by investigating the use of the latest ICT tools and applications. The emphasis is not on memorizing technical terms but rather on learning how to search and analyse information to achieve objectives in a professional manner. There will be used real-life examples and the latest Internet tools available to prepare the employees for their future virtual, digital, immediate, knowledge-based, and innovative working environment.

Unique Features of this Training

By streamlining communications between the provincial government and its departments with the central government, this program directly promotes the institutional development and capacity-building of the public sector. It will also contribute to a qualitative improvement in the administrative services offered at the provincial level, which in turn, will enhance local governance and the expansion and promotion of legal economic activities.

Although this program’s contribution to business development seems modest in the short term, it will be vast in the mid and long term due to the impact it will have on the promotion of new businesses and entrepreneurial opportunities at the regional level. It is also gender sensitive and will open new windows of opportunities for women in the region.

A strong, efficient, qualified and motivated public administration is an asset for the Afghan Canadian Community Center’s activities in Kandahar. This type of training will have a significant contribution to the development of human capital at the regional level. The emphasis of the Government Institutional Capacity Building Program on capacity-building activities will help improve the legal and regulatory governance at the provincial level.

Program Requirements

2 trainers (1 male and 1 female teacher)

Monthly salary: US$ 300.00 each for a total of US$2,400.00 per course.

Total cost of this Donor Request is US$600.00 a month, for a total of US$2,400.00 for a four month course.

In the end, it is ordinary people like you and me who have the potential to make the greatest difference. It all starts with the acknowledgement of a problem’s existence and the recognition that your actions can directly impact the lives of others.

If you know of any articles that meet this criteria and deserve a wider audience, please send them to theafghanschool@hotmail.com along with the author’s contact information, if available.

The Taliban exists because there is a vacuum of power and a lack of funding to fill it.

YOU’RE NOT going back over there are you?” I get asked that question a lot these days because “there” is Kabul, Afghanistan , and my mother, among others, doesn’t like what she has been reading lately, particularly about the suicide bombings.

In December, for a fourth time, my volunteer work for the not-for-profit Business Council for Peace (www.bpeace.org) will bring me back to Kabul, where indeed the news has been grim. Over the past few weeks I have awoken each morning to read the overnight emails from Bpeace associates, Afghan friends and contacts. They write of road-side bombs, rocket attacks and of Taliban notices warning women not to leave their homes. Our Bpeace associates are frightened for the first time since the fall of the Taliban, and some are putting plans for the future on hold.

Deteriorating situation

Suria, Bpeace’s program director writes that “the situation is very bad these days in Kabul , and all people afraid, everywhere people think of bombing and attacks and daily lots of people die. Also they say that we should think about escaping from the country.” Masuda, a Kabul businesswoman writes of the Taliban, “I heard that Taliban has sent a notice to Macrorayon Place , where there are English courses for both girls and boys that the girls should not come out of their home”. Nadir our local guide sadly emails that “some people who are helping Taliban, they have nothing to do, no work, no income, so they join with some who give them a little money.”

Bpeace works in Afghanistan (as well as Rwanda and Iraq) to help women grow businesses. Our aim is simple. Create economic opportunity and in the doing create hope and a rejection of conflict. We work with women because they generally have the most to lose and the least to gain in war. Because of this work I remain both committed and hopeful in Afghanistan, despite the current environment. Bpeace associates — women who just five years ago could not leave their homes under the Taliban — have been making progress in the development of their businesses. In the weeks before the recent surge of violence, my email in-box was filled with pictures of a new co-operative store site.

Fearing a loss of will

Clients were losing weight at Afifa’s women’s only gym. Nasria and Alia were landing purchase orders for their manufacturing businesses. Tami’s day-care center opened where the children have been singing songs. And the newly founded Afghan Women’s Business Federation opened its business training centers with the help of Bpeace curriculum. Almost 100 students have sufficient hope in the future that they paid tuition to receive training so they could open or grow Afghan businesses.

My hope does come with a big caveat. Does the American public have the will and attention to see this through? Much has been made in the past months about the Bush administration’s spoiled opportunity in Afghanistan. I am worried that in our rush to judgment on Bush, and in the heat of the November elections, our will to stay the course will be lost.

There are reasons for the current disintegrating situation, reasons which can be addressed if we have the will. Through my conversations with Afghan policemen, educators, business people and Bpeace’s associates, I know that the opium trade is not exploding in the provinces because Afghan’s like illicit industry; it exists because there is no alternative industry.

The Taliban is not resurging because the Afghan people want them; they exist because there is a vacuum of power and a lack of funding to fill it. I read recently that the police in Nuristan on the Afghan-Pakistan border have not been paid in months. And when in Kabul this July, we waited and hoped that a demonstration by the military would not turn riotous. The rumor on the street was the military had not been paid either. Not surprisingly Afghans fear that their government can not protect them.

People like us

I have come to know these people. Despite our cultural differences, these are women and people just like me, just like you. They want security, a paycheck and a home for their families and are willing to work hard for it. Afghans fear that we will leave them. It’s a fear the Taliban is happy to prey upon while Afghans wait for the international community and their own government to do something about Pakistan, which continues to support the insurgents.

Well-managed and adequately funded programs delivering education, infrastructure and security to the entire country, not just Kabul, are urgently needed to fill gaping voids, voids that will be otherwise filled with tragic consequences for Afghans and likely once again, Americans.

Afghans need the courage that will come from knowing that the international community and America is committed, and the Taliban needs to feel the threat. Bpeace is one small piece of demonstrating that commitment.

So yes, mother I am going back to Kabul.

Kate Buggeln, a New Jersey native and graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Rutherford campus, is a marketing consultant.

This piece was originally published in the The Bergen Record on October 22, 2006. It has been republished with the permission of the author.