Afghanistan

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:

  • The school has strong community support: it was established and is financially supported by the community, which is key to its sustainability;

  • The school is educating girls as well as boys;

  • Salman has a personal relationship with a number of the teachers;

  • 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.

  • Girl's High School

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.

  • Building a new primary school

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

  • A health clinic

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”.

  • Assisting Borjegai students at university

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.