WUNRN
AFGHANISTAN - USA CIRCLE OF WOMEN
PROJECT
SCHOOLS FOR GIRLS IN DEVELOPMENT
COUNTRIES
Global: A Circle Of Change In Afghanistan
By Ziana Qaiser
Massachusetts (Women's Feature Service) - There's a Pashto proverb which means
'Drop by drop, you make a river.' And that's what inspires Circle of Women, a
young, non-profit organisation based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that is
dedicated to educating girls in developing countries. By building one school at
a time, the Circle of Women aims to make education available to every girl who
wants one, with the belief that this is the best way to support positive,
global change. "Circle of Women feels that it has the opportunity and
privilege of position to empower women in countries where gender equality is
not an established right," says Megan Dempsey, founding member.
Project Wonkhai - their first undertaking - is a girl's school in Wonkhai, a
village in Afghanistan's Wardak province. This school is almost complete and
will open its doors to as many as 1,200 girls at the secondary level in March
next year, when the Afghan academic year begins.
"Given the fact that Afghan women suffer from among the highest rates of
illiteracy and lowest standards of health in the world, Afghanistan is not only
a country in need of change, but also a country where significant changes in
women's rights can be made," says Dempsey.
Not only will Circle of Women's work allow girls to improve their lives and
contribute productively to their societies, their efforts will also present
useful data that, over the years, will reveal the effects of educating girls in
developing countries.
Co-founder Cristina Ros feels their approach to sustainability is what allows
the NGO to make a unique impact. "Circle of Women's model is to have as
little overhead and operational costs as possible. Instead we aim to innovate
ways in which learning is a current and fixed asset," she explains.
"Our efforts are geared toward lasting sufficiency gained through
knowledge, and we firmly believe in promoting access to learning to provide the
tools by which people can make their own, most beneficial changes."
It's a group of students at Harvard University that created the Circle of Women
in 2006. In 2002, Clotilde Dedecker, another founding member, began a coalition
of girls' high schools in Buffalo, New York, to raise funds on behalf of school
construction in Afghanistan. Her experience provided the impetus for her fellow
students to take similar action. "After becoming an officially recognised
student group at Harvard, we realised that the Circle of Women needed to seek
its own non-profit status to complete its goal of supporting women's education
in the developing world and ultimately building its first school," adds
Dempsey.
The group's decision to build their first school in Afghanistan was partly
influenced by Dedecker's previous involvement there, and also by the fact that
they were meeting a demand. Nearly 1,200 female students at the nearby
elementary school that Kids4Afghankids (US-based non-profit organisation) built
and Dedecker's group helped to fund, were seeking secondary education. With a
supportive community in Wardak that has protected the school against any
attacks, Circle of Women began constructing the secondary school earlier this year
on land provided by the village elders.
Circle of Women is successfully fund raising to build the school house, with
the goal of raising $120,000 for construction costs. "We've given
ourselves the challenge of combining fund-raising with awareness-building, so
each fund-raising effort also functions as a small-scale information
campaign," says Britt Caputo, a founding member. "We've also tried to
involve and motivate several different demographics. This year, for instance,
we ran a "30 under 30" campaign, during which 30 women recruited 30
other women (all under 30) to donate US$30 in 30 days. Kind of a tongue
twister, but we got packets of our information and about Afghanistan out to a
lot of people, many of whom have since asked to get involved or made
suggestions about our work."
By keeping their operating costs minimal, Circle of Women is working hard to
ensure that donations yield the maximum impact. Members and collaborators work
on a volunteer basis so that the donations support Project Wonkhai directly.
Not only do the donations help build the school, they indirectly support the
local economy by funding construction materials, wages of labourers and school
supplies.
From their base in Massachusetts, the group keeps a close eye on the school's
progress in Afghanistan through a variety of contacts. Khris Nedam of
Kids4Afghankids, who built the nearby elementary girls school, offers advice
while their main on-site collaborator, Fahima Vorgetts, travels to the
construction site, hires and communicates with the workers and oversees general
construction issues on the group's behalf. Nedam and Vorgetts, both
award-winning humanitarians, have years of experience working in the social
sector in Afghanistan.
Since her involvement in Project Wonkhai, Vorgetts has been maintaining an
online journal on the Circle of Women website (www.circleofwomen.org), updating
it regularly with news about the progress of construction. In her journal, she
also points out the enthusiasm for learning that is prevalent among the young
girls in Wardak. "I visited the girls elementary school that Khris Nedam
built several years ago," writes Vorgetts, "The girls were so eager
to learn that even some of the students who had already graduated had come back
to school this year to repeat the same class. They were begging me to build a
secondary school for them to continue their education. They were saying there
is nothing else for them in their village. If they stay at home, they will be
married off. So they would rather repeat the same class. But, they insisted,
you can only repeat a class once, so they worry about next year."
Despite the fact that Project Wonkhai is in a country that is politically
volatile, the path to the school's construction has been fairly hassle-free.
Vorgetts writes that while conditions are dangerous, there is no fighting in
Wonkhai, where the villagers say they will protect the school with their blood.
"For the most part, there have been very few complications," says
Dempsey. "The group has taken multiple precautions to ensure that our
donor's contributions are securely transferred and used solely to support the
construction of the school."
Now that construction is almost complete, Circle of Women's focus is on
developing teacher training programmes as well as a model for
self-sustainability. "We will probably achieve this in a vocational after
school programme, where specialty teachers will teach students how to make
goods such as jewellery, silk, noodles and jam," says Caputo.
"Profits from selling the goods made in class will contribute to the
school's operational costs." Adds Ros, "This model of
self-sustainable education shows how learning can both, immediately and in the
long term, provide women with the capacity to create the change they most want
for themselves."
The Afghan government will supply teachers, who the Circle of Women will
encourage with monthly salary supplements, initial textbooks as well as school
supplies for the students. If the demand for the school exceeds capacity,
admission will be offered by lottery.
With their first project successfully underway, the group is looking forward to
growing as an organisation and building further connections. Caputo mentions
that several college-based groups in the US have been formed this summer to raise
awareness and funds for Project Wonkhai, and the group is also exploring the
possibility of expanding their focus to a project in India.
"As the women of Circle of Women have grown, learned more about the
non-profit world, and realised our commitment to our school in Wonkhai, the
organisation has grown in leaps and bounds," adds Dempsey. "Now that
its founders graduate or are about to graduate, I would like to see the
organisation make the transition into the post college world that its members
are transitioning into, and connect to our cause more women with a similar
passion about women's education."
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