‘My little sister, Amina, is a nice girl who is very eager to finish school. We live in the village of Siyawshan, in the Gozara district of Western Afghanistan, in a rural area south of Herat.

My sister wants to become a nurse in the future to help people of Afghanistan. Amina is very good at school and is the best student in her class.

Ockenden International has been involved in Afghanistan for over 7 years. During the Taliban years, our activities were kept low key and discrete because our work in education could threaten Ockenden’s staff, teachers and pupils. Despite this, Ockenden International was able to operate community based home schools in three districts that were under Taliban control in Afghanistan.

It is important to note that impediments to girls’ education in Afghanistan were not simply due to the Taliban – there are strongly held cultural and social traditions, especially in rural areas of Afghanistan about girls attending school. In many traditional areas, these views are still held, so there can be deep suspicion about education, which is why it is important to involve local communities in the development of local schools.

Regime change from December 2001 opened up new opportunities for the children of Afghanistan, and girls in particular, to participate openly in schooling and education. There was a desperate need to re-establish many of the schools that had been virtually destroyed by years of conflict. This involved rebuilding village schools that were ruined and implementing major repairs to others that had been badly damaged. There was also an urgent need to refurbish the schools with books and other learning equipment and materials.

Ockenden International implemented such a programme. Our aim was to ensure that as many schools as possible could open during 2002. To do this, we set up a programme to rebuild primary and home schools throughout Western Afghanistan and to ensure that these schools could be used for girls’ education also.

The timeframe for achieving this was important – we wanted to ensure that as many schools as possible could open in time for the start of the winter term. If these schools were not built before then, we would not be able to build through the harsh winter, meaning that children would not be able to go to school until the spring. Our concern was that we needed to ensure children’s enthusiasm for education, especially from girls, would not be dampened and that we would not hinder children, any longer than necessary, from accessing education.

The village of Siyawshan was chosen because the village community had expressed a desire to see their daughters attend primary school. Ockenden International started work on rebuilding the destroyed village school, a process that took two months, so that the school would be able to open in time for the new term.

The school was not build from scratch, but was completely gutted – the walls were re-plastered and repainted, new doors put up, window frames and glass panes added, the badly damaged roof was repaired.

Ockenden International used the local labour force to rebuild the school, so as to ensure that, as far as possible, the benefits of the project and ownership of the school were retained by the village. Ockenden’s engineers and foreman supervised the work to ensure that it was of an acceptable quality.

The school was opened in late September with a large ceremony involving parents, village elders and officials from Ockenden International and the regional Ministry of Education. After pupils recited the Holy Qaran, teachers and the District Governor and President of Western Afghanistan Ministry of Education Department spoke of the importance of education for all sections of society, the right to education under Islam and how this was ‘the golden opportunity for the children to return to school’.

The school now has eight classrooms, with over 320 pupils attending. There is a split shift system for girls who attend at different times than boys. Subjects taught include Dari, Pusthu, drawing, theology, geography, history, physics and maths. Children have also been given a ‘school pack’ of basic materials – a satchel, two notebooks, a set of 12 pencils, a rubber and a pencil sharpener.

Although the school is now up and running, Ockenden International will continue to monitor the school and to work with the village community to make certain that the school remains a success. Ockenden International will maintain close relations with the village council to ensure that girls’ continue to be allowed access to school.

The school is also benefiting from Ockenden International’s teacher training and in-service training programme. Ockenden works in partnership with the Ministry of Education to provide teachers working within the primary education sector in rural Afghanistan with the opportunity to learn new skills and gain expertise so that over the long-term, the education sector within Afghanistan is strengthened and secure for future generations.