Provide Education to the Females of Afghanistan
Help to educate women and girls in Afghanistan. This gift will help towards increasing female literacy rates in Afghanistan. You can sponsor a female student's education in either a lower level literacy course (called Sowat Amausi which literally means 'to teach one to become literate') or throughout her higher level literacy courses (called Sowat Hayati which translates to 'literate for life'). Lower level courses include an accelerated 10-month curriculum covering grades 1-3 and higher level courses cover grades 4-9 in six years.
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The Need
The education of women and girls is a matter of no small importance in Afghanistan. For a nation that is recovering from twenty-five years of war, the way forward in Afghanistan can only be paved by an educated, empowered populace that respects individual and human rights, including women’s rights. However, there are many social and cultural taboos associated with female education in the formal school system- parents are unwilling to send their daughters to co-ed schools, schools have male teachers, schools require the students to walk long distances, and young mothers are unable to attend because they cannot leave their infants at home. As a result, the current female literacy rate is only about 14%. So in order to accommodate parent’s wishes and to ensure that girls are not kept away from an education, the government has created a system of Literacy Courses for girls and women. Barakat uses this curriculum to expand the scope and reach of this system to help increase literacy for women and girls in the northern provinces of Faryab and Jowzjan. These courses meet the needs of the parents and the students by providing female only classes led by women teachers, which allow the older women to bring their infants. The classes are held in the neighborhood in houses of host families who either donate their living space for the duration of the lower level literacy courses, or are paid rent and cleaning charges by Barakat for the duration of the higher level literacy course.
About Barakat
Partner since September, 2008
Barakat exists to strengthen the fundamental human rights to education in South and Central Asia by providing exemplary basic education, increasing access to higher education and advancing literacy, particularly for women and children. Barakat works towards this mission through its implementing partner NGOs in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. One such area of focus is education in Afghanistan. Many people miss out on education because they live too far from schools and programs, or don’t have enough money to pay for the classes or the materials they need to attend those classes. In Afghanistan, there are strict cultural codes that put tight restrictions on the interactions between boys and girls, and therefore girls are forbidden from being educated, because the programs are not separated by gender. Barakat works to overcome such obstacles and ensure that everyone who wants an education can get one.
