Education in Afghanistan

Program Objective:

Enhancing education, training, monitoring and awareness-raising on human rights. The goal of the Education for Human Rights: Afghanistan programme (EHRA) is to foster human rights awareness among teachers and students in Afghanistan. The proposal is designed to educate pre-service teachers at the Said Jamoliddin Teacher Training College in Kabul and the Nangarhar University Teacher Training College in Jalalabad about human rights. Emphasis is placed on the rights of women and children, as the programme ultimately helps teachers develop age appropriate classroom modules on human rights for school children. RI brings to the effort its experience in project management and expertise in the education, technology, and human rights sectors.

Timeline of the events (February 15, 2007 - September 2007):

A. Key Indicators:

Number of:
-   Master Trainers trained: 20
-   Teachers trained: 342
-   HR Club members/students trained: 40

B. Progress:

• February 2007 – During the first two weeks from the beginning of the project the staff was hired, questionnaires were developed and three subsequent seminars were conducted with a purpose of determining the state of the given issue.

• March 2007: the Memorandum for Understanding with Education Departments of JAAL and Kabul were signed.

• March – April 2007: HR Education curriculum was developed; HR resources were collected and translated into Dari.

• April 2007: meetings with key organizations such as UNDP, MFA, Save the Children Sweden, Family Welfare Focus, Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, UNDP, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and others that work in the sphere of HR were conducted.

• April - May 2007: 11 candidates for master teachers training from 11 schools of Kabul and 9 teachers from JAAL were selected and trained on HR Education.

• May – September, 2007: 13 trainings conducted and 390 teachers were trained in Kabul and Jalalabad
for pre-service teachers and in-service teachers of TTC’s and teachers of 37 schools of Kabul and JAAL has been trained. Almost 60% of trainees are female.

• July-August 2007: HR Clubs were created and followings were accomplished:
-   September - October – HR Club student- members were trained on leadership, HR Ed, project design, public speaking and other essential knowledge and skills.
-   October - students started developing their own projects and activities.

C. Already existing and earned experience of RI was successfully used in the implementation of a number of events that were not presented in the original proposal, such as the following:

-   There was a great Interest from a number of non-partner schools to host trainings (main partner schools: Said Jamoliddin Teacher Training College in Kabul and the Nangarhar University Teacher Training College in Jalalabad) and as a result 6 trainings were conducted at Mariam Girls and Aysha Durrani Girls High Schools in Kabul and in Bibi Aysha Girls High School and Tajrobavi School in Jalalabad, important that teachers trained where from different schools of this two provinces.

-   HREd website (not proposed at the original proposal) was created and is currently running successfully: http://www.rihr.blogspot.com

-   A number of on-line forums were conducted on HR, as well as women’s’ and children’s’ rights related topics in Feb.-Sept., 2007, see http://www.rihr.blogspot.com +forums


-   Five (5) teachers of ICT were extensively trained on HREd, and now they have expertise to train HR Ed. projects based in ICT’s;

-   Two (2) trainers from TEP (Teachers Education Program Department of the MoEd) Mr. Sardor Hussain Han and Mr. Bismillah Han were trained and now they are conducting trainings by using EIDHR methodology and the program manual at trainings initiated by TEP Department MoEd. Recently 30 Master teacher trainers have been trained at this department on HR Ed. by two of prepared by project master trainers.

-    Among the trainees we had several teachers who now teach Literacy at government established centers for alliterated people such as drivers, genitors, and other blue collar workers. Our program equipped such trainees with HR Ed methodology.

-   HR Club members are working on two electronic magazines which will cover a broad rage of topics with special focus on HR. The magazines will be presented during International Education Week, Nov 12-16.


-   A number of teachers who took the training expressed their desire to conduct similar trainings for early childhood teacher, such as kindergarten teachers.

-   Paint and drawings exhibition on “Women’s rights in Afghanistan” was initiated (available on http://www.rihr.blogspot.com )

-   Women’s and children’s rights issues were covered in several presentations to the various communities and were simultaneously covered by media

All the activities and social events listed and described previously that were not part of the initial proposal, became a highly essential parts of the project, which is setting a basis for a continuous and successful activity of the project as well as the recognition by the Afghan society.

Attachments:

• AFGH EIDHR Progress Report Feb-Sept. 2007(10-30-2007 MA).doc (DOC)