Establishing a school building complex in Zenda Jan, Afghanistan
Construction works in Zenda Jan are progressing. Progress report nr 10 sent to us by the construction company confirms that the second floor of the main building is completed.
The construction work of a girls school in the Zenda Jan district started in October 2008.
As early as in 2006 we started the preparation work to prepare the project and build a school complex for approx. 2500 girls in Zenda Jan near Herat, western Afghanistan. Relying on a project of a two-storey school building already implemented near Herat by our friends of Women for Afghan Women, we drew up a detailed building project in co-operation with the Women for Afghan Women organization.
The project, prepared even more thoroughly and punctilious than our previous school projects, was submitted to FOREIGN AID 2008 competition organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland to for financial support. Unfortunately, the Ministry reclined to subsidise it.
Eventually, the funds for the school building project were raised by Virginia Boden, an American citizen, who is also supervising the implementation of the project. We are very happy about Virginia’s success, particularly because EfP has contributed to the ultimate success to a significant extent. While applying for a project grant, Virginia Boden consulted us many times and utilised our procedures and previous project submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, and unfortunately turned down by the Ministry, the project we had been working on for two years.
The secondary school for girls in Zenda Jan will comprise 16 class rooms, with the staff of 40 teachers. The project was met with huge local support, and the local community declared their will to help with the construction work and to provide for students’ safety. As for EfP, we will do our best to provide the school library and classrooms with study aids. A new school building should become a perfect environment for young pupils, so that they could appreciate the benefits of education. It should also function as a venue for teacher training, as one of the main deficiencies of the Zenda Jan district is the lack of a qualified school staff. Teacher trainings will be run by a group of experienced volunteer teachers. After the completion of construction work we and Virginia Boden will be still supervising the education process carried out in the newly built school and address its everyday needs. Moreover, initial co-operation has been established between a school in Hamburg, Germany, and a school in Castro Valley, California, whose authorities are willing to launch a school partnership programme that would embrace the secondary school in Zenda Jan. We are looking forward to a similarly positive response from schools in Poland.
It is also worth mentioning that in the city of Zenda Jan there is a flourishing women’s local government (called shura), which has a firm intention of supporting the school’s activity. This local government comprises more than 400 women who reside in their own building and have been carrying on business activity for a few years now, their main occupation being sericulture, silk production, silk goods manufacturing, and production of fruit preserves, the latter being sold even in Kabul: in 2007 the Zenda Jan women’s shura was the only women’s organization in Afghanistan to take part in the national agricultural fair in Kabul! The shura intends to share their experience with the future schoolgirls, and run professional sericulture, silk production, tailoring and food preserving courses. 1600 girls (there is no room for a greater number of girls in the school building, although the demand is much higher) from Zenda Jan, and Zenda Jan women as such will benefit from the project. Actually, all Zenda Jan citizens will benefit from the school project, although in a less direct way. Educated women will be able to become financially independent, and their social position will rise. Furthermore, they will encourage other women to be active, which should result in an improved general condition of Afghan women. To conclude, not only will this project contribute to increasing educational levels of women in northern Afghanistan, but it will also encourage enterprise and business activity carried out by women.
