Afghan girls, finally in school (universities, computers, pay, principal)

[Cida]

A hopeful story.


A School With No Heat or Computers but Many College-Bound Students. Mostly Girls.
By Rod Nordland

There is no electricity, heat, working computers or copy machines. Many school materials are written out in longhand by teachers. Foreign aid once helped but has dried up. One teacher said she has fewer books than students. Only 5 percent of the students have parents who can read and write, Mr. Nasiri said. Most are the children of subsistence farmers.
Yet Rustam’s 2017 graduating class saw 60 of 65 graduates accepted to Afghanistan’s public universities, a 92 percent college entrance rate. Two-thirds of those accepted were girls. A couple of years earlier, 97 percent of the graduates went to college. Unlike most Afghan schools, Rustam mixes boys and girls in its classrooms. “Men and women are equal,” the principal said. “They have the same brains and the same bodies.” He added, “We tell these boys and girls, there is no difference between you guys, and you will all be together when you go to college, so you need to learn how to respect one another.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/w...sultPosition=2

[nana053]

That is a hopeful story. I wonder if the teachers could form a group to ask for a loan on Kiva. They would have to pay the loan back, but perhaps they could start small and used the money to buy a copier so teachers did not have to write out the work in long hand.

[Cida]

Originally Posted by nana053

That is a hopeful story. I wonder if the teachers could form a group to ask for a loan on Kiva. They would have to pay the loan back, but perhaps they could start small and used the money to buy a copier so teachers did not have to write out the work in long hand.

Nice idea, although I suspect they need non-mechanical things even more. I think there are quite a few groups trying to fund various things, and one or two groups specifically for Afghanistan, like Women for Afghan Women.