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The Omid Schools

The Challenge 

The girls pictured in this photo live in Godah, one of 18 villages that lie alongside a river-bed in the Afghan province of Wardak. As the crow flies, Godah is not far from Kabul, the capital. But the forbidding terrain makes it remote and inaccessible. During their decade-long occupation of Afghanistan the Russians only invaded this valley once, and then only stayed for three days. The valley was barely affected by the Taliban rule.



The Omid schools project provides an education to all girls, regardless of their families' income. 

Like so many villages in Afghanistan, Godah has both benefited and suffered from its isolation. It is a close-knit community and largely self-sufficient. Services of all kind, however, are almost non-existent. When the Taliban fell, in 2001, there was one school for boys serving the entire valley, and one small hospital. The hospital was financed by Saudi Arabia but closed down following the invasion of Iraq when its funding stopped.

Until 2002, there was no girl’s school in the entire valley. This reflected a national crisis. According to some estimates, only one percent of the women in Afghanistan could read or write when the Taliban ruled. Afghanistan’s literacy rate has risen since the return of Afghan refugees from Iran and Pakistan, but according to a recent report from the United Nations it still remains among the lowest in the world. Nearly 80 percent of the country’s 6,900 schools were destroyed or damaged by war.

In December 2002, a small revolution occurred in Godah when Sadiqa Basiri, a young woman who had returned from Pakistan, persuaded her father, a much respected elder, to help her start a program for educating girls. 40 girls enrolled. Initially, classes took place in the small village mosque. Ms. Basiri paid for the teachers’ salaries from her own salary. At the time, she was working with the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), a prominent women’s organization based in Peshawar (Pakistan) and Kabul.

In early 2003, Mary Moore, a consultant from The Advocacy Project, arrived in Afghanistan to work with the AWN. Ms. Moore reported on her experience on The Advocacy Project website and attracted the attention of a generous donor who offered to fund an education project in Afghanistan.

According to some estimates, only one percent of the women in Afghanistan could read or write when the Taliban ruled. Nearly 80 percent of the country's 6,900 schools were destroyed or damaged in the war.

Ms. Basiri responded by visiting several communities and designed a three-year project for educating girls in the Godah school and two other villages. One was in the district of Paghman (Kabul province) and the other in Kama (Nagrahar). Ms. Basiri hoped to provide an education for between 1,800 and 2,400 girls. She also hoped to build respect for girls’ education in the interior of Afghanistan and hand over the schools to the government after three years. The Advocacy Project helped Ms. Basiri to refine the proposal. At the end of 2003 it was accepted by the donor, who made a generous grant of $39,000 for three years.

Until 2002, there were no girls' school established in Godah village (above).
The original idea was that Ms. Basiri would manage the project from within the Afghan Women’s Network, taking advantage of AWN’s grassroots membership. Ms. Basiri found it impossible to do the two jobs at the same time. She and the AWN struggled through the spring and summer of 2004, and then she left to work full-time on the project. She formed her own organization, which was registered in the name of the Human Relief Foundation. Together with her board members, she decided to change the name to the Omid Learning Center. (Omid is the Pashtu for “hope.”)

The following pages will tell the story of the project as it develops, drawing on Ms. Basiri’s own reports. All of the reports for 2004 are being posted at once, after editing. Thereafter, reports will be added as they are received from Ms. Basiri.

There would not be a school in Godah were it not for the partnership between Ms. Basiri and the community. This was never taken for granted, because education can be deeply subversive in a traditional community.

Ms. Basiri’s first challenge has been to help families understand the value of investing in their daughters’ education. This was never taken for granted, because education can seem subversive to a traditional society. The support of Ms. Basiri’s own father was critical in winning over elders and religious leaders in her own village. 

Women, too, had to be co-opted. Early on, Ms. Basiri also held a lunch meeting for mothers and grandmothers in Godah. Many of the old women cried as she spoke of education, because they themselves had never been to school. Their support has also proved critical in getting the project approved. During 2004, the partnership between the families of Godah and the Basiris has been tested and deepened, as both sides have come to understand what the other can bring to the other.

The same is true of the partnership between Ms. Basiri and her government. Afghanistan’s government has been rebuilt from scratch since 1991. That this has been a long and difficult process becomes clear when we read the following pages. The Ministry of Education needed to repair almost 5,000 damages schools, find and train teachers and administrators, build its own capacity to manage an education system, develop a national curriculum, coordinate and reassure foreign donors.

In so doing, the Ministry has sought to manage, control and centralize – while at the same time providing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with room to operate. The Afghan government is still uncertain how much it wants to delegate to NGOs. It is difficult to build a national system when NGOs are operating independently, but at the same time they bring resources and energy to the task, and an ability to work in communities. It was particularly hard to strike a balance in the early days, when the government was struggling to assert its own authority.

A third partnership to emerge in these pages is between Ms. Basiri and The Advocacy Project. AP does not specialize in education, but we do support the work of advocates like Ms. Basiri who are determined to build a more peaceful and just society in their countries. As a result, AP has agreed to act as a fiduciary agent for the Omid grant and promote Ms. Basiri’s advocacy on behalf of girl’s education, while she is establishing her program.

The best way we can do that is by reporting honestly on the progress of the project, as we hope to do in these pages. AP has also arranged meetings for Ms. Basiri in Washington, and will be encouraging the formation of a support group in the United States that can raise funds for Omid’s work beyond 2006, when the grant expires. Anyone interested in helping is invited to contact us.

At the same time, Omid’s donor needs to know that her funds are used responsibly. Ms. Basiri is remarkably open to suggestions and guidance, but it has not been easy to communicate at such a distance and AP’s own capacity to manage field projects is limited. We have addressed this by drawing on the enthusiasm and expertise of graduates at Georgetown University. Adriana Boscov worked extensively with Ms. Basiri during 2004, and Ginny Barahona interned with Ms. Basiri in the summer of 2004. We hope to send another intern this coming summer.

© www.worldatlas.com

The OMID schools, denoted by orange stars, are in Wardak province (2), Nangrahar (1), and in Jalalabad (1). 

Omid is a classic example of how civil society can bridge the gap between war and peace

Will it succeed? In answering that, our readers will need to assess Omid on two different levels.

At one level, the project seeks to provide an education for up to 2,000 Afghan girls over three years that will provide them with life tools. At another level, Omid seeks to develop a model for community-based education that can be of larger use to her country as it struggles to build a modern educational system.

Omid is a classic example of how civil society can bridge the gap between war and peace. By tapping into the vitality of Afghan communities, and drawing in allies abroad, Omid is providing essential support while the government slowly emerges from the ruins and assumes its responsibilities.

It is a huge challenge, but as these pages show, there is much that can be achieved by people with determination and vision. Most of the following pages are reports compiled by the Advocacy Project using regular reports sent by Sadiqa Basiri from Afghanistan, while others are first-hand accounts by Ms. Basiri and various AP staff members and interns.

• To read a report by the Women's Edge Coalition titled "Strengthening Afghan Women's Civil Society to Secure Afghanistan's Future: An Analysis of New U.S. Assistance Programs" click here. This report details the development challenges faced by women who suffered under the brutal Taliban regime.

The Advocacy Project (AP) seeks to empower its partners by encouraging information production. AP is crediting the contents of this section to the Afghan Women's Network (AWN).

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