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Borjegai
Village - Hazarajhat, Central Afghanistan
IF provides support to
Borjegai village in Central Afghanistan: a remote village
that is 7-8 hours drive from Kabul (although access to
Kabul is not possible during the winter months). Borjegai
is inhabited by the Hazara people group. Hazaras make up
approximately 20 per cent of the Afghanistan population
and have been persecuted on ethnic and religious grounds
for almost a century. Borjegai is poor, there is no
electricity and access to resources is extremely limited.
There has been no recent international or government
funding support to the community and no international NGOs
work there.
Borjegai School
The main Borjegai School
is made up of a co-educational high school, two ‘middle
schools’ (grades 6-9) and six primary schools (grades
1-5). There are 3,900 students in total of which about
1,500 are girls (being 40%). Although the school is
registered with the Afghan government, the Education
Department is unable to provide school books for the
students. Students have been using a limited number of
texts dating back to the war with Russia. The
infrastructure consists of old buildings without windows
and doors, damaged during the Russian war. They also use
tents that were erected by UNICEF in 2002. Children bring
their own rug to sit on for classes.
The teachers
There are thirty seven
staff. Most of the teachers are not formally qualified but
have enough education to pass on to the students. Half the
teachers are paid, and half teach on a voluntary basis.
They are highly committed people.
IF’s initial commitment
In 2003, the first year
of our relationship with Borjegai, we provided $5,000
towards the purchase of school books for the school. 6,000
books arrived in Borjegai in December 2003, to the delight
of students and school staff. Working with two members of
the Hazara community in Sydney (Salman Jan and Kawa
Mobillagh), we chose to assist Borjegai because:
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The school has strong
community support: it was established and is financially
supported by the community, which is key to its
sustainability;
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The school is educating
girls as well as boys;
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Salman has a personal
relationship with a number of the teachers;
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There are no other
existing NGO partners and IF’s contribution has the
potential to make a significant impact.
IF’s ongoing commitment
agreements
IF has since entered
into three Commitment Agreements with the school.
Under the first
commitment agreement,
made in 2005, IF provided $5,000 per year for three years which was used
for teachers’ salaries since there is a shortage of
qualified teachers in Afghanistan and it is necessary to
pay good teachers higher salaries to attract them to the
regions.
A second
commitment agreement
was entered into in 2005. Thanks to the
generosity of an IF donor, IF was able to contribute
$16,500 towards the construction of a girls high school
for 750 students – the first in the region. The Borjegai
community provided the land, labour and tools for the
project. IF also provided $3,500 per year for three years towards the
operational costs of the girls high school.
IF's
partnership with the Borjegai School has continued to
grow as the positive results of our assistance (over the
last 5 years) has become more and more evident. The Hazara
community has been faithful to their part of the
Agreements, including reporting requirements and
consistency with IF's guiding principles. Recently
a third, three year commitment agreement between IF and
the school was signed.
Under this new agreement, IF has promised to contribute
$27,000 towards the construction of a primary school
building to replace tents which are currently used as
classrooms. IF will also continue
to provide
$5,000 for teachers’ salaries and $3,500 each year
towards the operational costs of the girls high school.
Monitoring and Evaluation
Visits
Borjegai Village has
received two visits from IF representatives. In June 2004,
Salman Jan visited the schools on behalf of IF and in June
2006, Kawa Moballigh made the same long journey. On each
occasion, the IF representatives went to assess the use of
funds already provided, as well as discuss and evaluate
the schools’ ongoing needs. The assessments were positive
and the community expressed its appreciation for IF’s
support. During the 2006 visit, when asked by Kawa
Moballigh about other needs that IF might be able to
assist with, the tribal elders and school principal
identified as high priorities a health clinic and more
primary school buildings (to replace the tents currently
in use). Support for the construction of another primary
school was incorporated in the most recent commitment
agreement and IF is seriously considering the support of a
health clinic (see below for more details).
We are hoping that an IF
representative will be able to make a monitoring and
evaluation visit to the Borjegai community in June 2008.
This will provide an opportunity to assess the projects, as well as consolidate the
relationship of trust which is one of the key tenets our
support is based on.
IF Projects in Borjegai
The
following provides more detail about the projects in
Borjegai village that IF has and potentially will be
involved with.
Following the fall of the
Taliban in 2002 and for the first time in its history,
Borjegai leaders decided it was important to educate
girls. This was an enormous and exciting step forward.
While girls are welcome at all levels within the
established Borjegai School, which we are supporting, many
villagers still believe that once they reach adolescence,
girls should not associate with boys and therefore refuse
to let their girls attend the co-educational high school.
During discussions with IF representative, Salman Jan,
during his 2004 visit, village leaders and school teachers
expressed their view that the most appropriate solution to
the exclusion of some girls at adolescence to education
was to build a Girls High School. IF fully supported this
approach and undertook to find an organisation or person
who might assist in helping this happen (since the funds
required were greater than IF could manage). Thanks to the
generous donation of an IF supporter, IF was able to
contribute to the building of the Girls High School.
Community Ownership
The community was
determined to make the Girl's High School a reality. As
such, from the beginning of our discussions, the community
committed both financial and in-kind support for the
building and operating costs. The overall cost of building
the Girl's High School was approximately AUD$46,000. The
community provided $29,500 of this by donating the land
and raising funds to pay for the tradesmen and tools
necessary to build the School. Local businessmen agreed to
pay for 70% of cash costs. This left approximately $16,500
to be raised, which is the amount that IF provided. These
funds covered concrete, wood, plaster, doors, windows and
other building materials needed for the new building. In
terms of operating costs, staff costs around AUD$14,600
per year and materials and administration comes to about
$1,500. Of this, $12,600 was expected to come from the
Afghan Government (65%) and the community (35%), leaving
$3,500 to be donated by IF.
Accessibility
The Girl's High School is
located on land about one kilometre outside one of the
sub-villages of Borjegai. This site is accessible to
students from all three local tribes. While the total
population of the village is about 36,000, about half of
that population is within reasonable walking distance
(being about an hour and a half’s walk) from the site.
The road network in
Borjegai is of poor quality. To get to the School, the
girls walk on local mountain paths which are kept clear by
regular use and rock clearing. The girls walk in groups.
All the girls in one sub-village, say ten of them, gather
together in the morning and walk together to the high
school. This is a sociable and friendly event.
The Girls High School is
expected to become an important centre for activity and
celebration (as is the main school). Important days in the
Afghan calendar such as New Year and Independence Day are
celebrated in the local school buildings. This involves
the best students from each class writing essays in
advance, and then giving speeches on the day to the
parents and other community members that attend. There are
groups of students who recite poems and traditional lyrics
and songs. Previously, women and girls have been included
in these gatherings at the co-educational School and it is
expected they will continue to be involved through the
Girls High School – maybe even more so.
On our last monitoring
and evaluation visit to Borjegai (2006) the community
elders and school principal identified the building of a
new primary school to replace some of the tents being used
as makeshift classrooms as a key priority. In addition to
being uncomfortable and distracting, the tents cannot be
used in very hot or cold weather. This means that the
primary school students who have their classes in the
tents miss out on several months of the teaching year.
This is another joint project between IF and the Borjegai
community, with IF providing $27,000 to cover the cost of
materials and the community providing the land, labour
and tools necessary (valued at
$32,000).
The Agreement requires
narrative and financial progress reports, photographs and
a budget at different stages in the construction of the
building. A representative of each of the three tribes
that live in Borjegai is required to approve the spending
of the money in writing, and the Financial Trustee (a
local trusted business man) will disburse the funds as he
did for the successful construction of the Girls’ High
School.
Once the school is built,
the community expects to get about three quarters of the
cost of furniture from the Afghan Ministry of Education
(as occurred for the girls high school). They will cover the
rest themselves. There are no other ongoing operational
costs as teachers (with IF's help), books and stationery are already
provided by the school.
The village community has
already started work on the school. The hard work of
breaking rocks to be used for the walls has begun and will
continue over the freezing winter. All going well, the
building is expected to be completed in time for the
beginning of the school year in March 2009.
Potential projects
There are no medical
services available in Borjegai village, despite the
desperate need for them. Rates of maternal and infant
mortality, if based on the Afghan average, are appalling.
Once a clinic is established, the elders are confident
that, as has occurred in other places, the government and
non-profit organisations based in Kabul will provide money
to run the clinic, provide medicine and vaccinations, and
pay for the staff. The constant frustration for the
villagers is that these services will not be provided
without the building, but the government and non-profit
organisations will not pay for the building. This is
where IF can make a difference. The villagers are
prepared to contribute the land and labour and have
estimated they need a contribution of $20,000 from IF to
complete the project.
Although the need for a
health clinic was a priority identified by village elders
in IF’s 2006 monitoring and evaluation trip in 2006, until
recently IF has not been able to provide this support due
to our limited resources. Instead we have looked for a
larger partner non-profit organisation to provide
financial support. The good news is that the steady growth
of IF’s financial support and volunteer base now means it
may be possible for IF to support this project on our
own.
We will need to work
closely with the community to answer a number of questions
before making this significant commitment however. While
there are several nurses living in the village, concerns
about the sourcing of doctors, the quality of health
professionals in general, and the ability to provide
continuous supplies of medical equipment, items and
pharmaceuticals need to be addressed. It is clear that
the provision of basic health services such as treating
common causes of mortality and morbidity (e.g. diarrhea
and acute respiratory infections), providing pain killers,
first aid, assisting in childbirth and giving
vaccinations, could make an enormous difference in the
lives of the villagers. As one elder poignantly described
the situation during Kawa’s visit, “Anything is better
than waiting, suffering and dying”.
There has been a
remarkable improvement in the educational standards
reached by the students since the beginning of IF’s
involvement with Borjegai School. Eighty percent of
graduating students are now successful in the national
university entrance exams. This high success rate is
unheard of in most remote, disadvantaged regions of the
country. It is a testament to the enthusiasm of the
students and the dedication of the staff, some of whom are
volunteers. For the past three years, each class of
graduating students has postponed their own university
studies by one year in order to teach at the school so as
to assist the following year’s students. The success rate
is also due to the effectiveness of the teacher training
program which was introduced by the school on the
recommendation of Salman Jan, an IF representative, in his
visit to the region in 2004. The school has even indicated
that it will probably be in a position in about two years
to discontinue the teacher training because the quality of
the local teachers has improved so much.
A question that regularly
arises when IF volunteers speak about the Afghanistan
project at fund raising events is how the young school
graduates are coping in the ‘big smoke’ of Kabul where
they are attending university. The move from Borjegai to
the big city can indeed be a daunting one. In recognition
of these challenges, a lecturer at Kabul University, who
is himself originally from Borjegai, has recently formed a
small ‘student organisation’ to support the new graduates.
The group has started to meet on a Friday (the equivalent
of our weekend). The existing students show the new
students from Borjegai around the city and the University,
help them find accommodation and make introductions to
other teachers and students which are important in Afghan
culture to getting ahead.
Students find it hard to
get affordable accommodation in Kabul because they have
very little money. Under the previous Soviet system,
students who successfully passed the entrance exams were
automatically given funds to cover their living expenses.
This is no longer the case. Students who pass the exams
have only their education paid for and they must support
themselves. The cost of living for a student per year is
approximately $A400. The Kabul students find it easier to
support themselves both because they have family to live
with and because they have better English skills and can
often teach English as a part time job. The Borjegai
students can take up to two years to find a job, for
example, in a hotel, because they do not even know the
Kabul dialect when they arrive.
Despite all the problems, we are advised that the students
are pursuing their courses with great interest and
enthusiasm.
At the request of a
number of IF supporters, IF is currently discussing with
the student organisation ways in which we might assist
these committed and determined students to complete their
university degrees.
With
much achieved, and many new and exciting avenues to
continue providing assistance, the IF volunteers connected
with our Afghanistan projects feel very privileged to be
involved.
Volunteers' vibes about
the Afghanistan project
“A
lot of the hard work on this project, including the
monitoring and evaluation visits, has been done by two
former Afghan refugees who now live in Australia (Salman
and Kawa). I have been inspired by their commitment to
helping the children in this remote Afghan village get an
education. I am constantly reminded that even a small
project such as this can make an enormous impact on many
peoples’ lives. When I read in the papers about the
sadness and destruction going on in Afghanistan I know
that at least in this remote village in Hazarajhat, some
kids are getting a chance at a better life.” Sarah Kelly -
Project Manager
“I think you
will not believe the current situation but it is more bad
than you may get in Australian news papers. Despite all of
this, I and other Borjegai people are hopeful we can give
a future to our children. Your work is not small. It is a
big work. Even now we see the big changes in our children
lives as I said for the first time our children go to
university. We give all the credit for this to yourself,
Mr. Kawa Moballigh, Mr. Salman Jan and all the Indigo
Foundation members and others who kindly given us the
money.”
Extract from
a letter from: Mohammad Anwar Haidary
The Financial Trustee for Borjegai School,
Kabul-Afghanistan (3 September 2007)
If you would like more information please contact project
manager Sarah Kelly at indigo.foundation@bigpond.com.
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