Newsletter – Spring 2010
Khaliqdad School Completed
This spring has seen the completion of the Khaliqdad School buildings. The school has up to 1500 children, who are now able to sit inside for classes, where previously they were taught in large tents.
School building completed
To complete the project £3500 needs to be raised to fit the classrooms with desks and chairs. If you would like to donate towards this please click here.
90 Kindergarten Kids Graduate
In March over 90 children graduated from the ASET kindergarten. The teachers then went out into the local neighbourhood looking for new students, checking their ages and financial state to insure those from the poorest families were given the opportunity to join the kindergarten. The new children have now begun and are currently being introduced to the kindergarten rules and getting to know each other. We are happy to be starting another cycle of giving hope to these children and enabling them to see further than their own little world.
Children receiving their Certificates of Attendance
Children leaving the Kindergarten with their new school supplies
New Kindergarten opens in Turkmanabad
Turkmanabad is a district in Mazar e Sharif that is home to around 550 families most of whom are of Turkmen ethnicity. There are no streets but just narrow alleys and the community is poor, with unemployment very high and no school for the local children to attend. The opening of a kindergarten in this area is a real blessing to the children and local community.
When the property for the kindergarten was first rented it was in a very poor state, but renovation was done by local workers, using local materials and has now opened.
The kindergarten will run three mornings a week for 35 of the poorest children in the community, who are aged between 3-6 years old. The curriculum is going to be consistent with the main ASET kindergarten curriculum, and will include, educational, games, knowledge acquiring exercises, learning about the world, literacy and math and basic English for the older children. There are three local teachers and an assistant and the hope is that more local women can be trained to become teachers in the future and eventually the running of the Kindergarten can be transferred to the local community.
‘I gave opium to my baby…’
In March a midwife from London travelled out to visit the team and see the work ASET is doing, this is a small report from her trip:
‘’My baby didn’t breastfeed very often because I gave him opium which made him sleepy. That’s why I fell pregnant again so quickly.” This was a comment made by a woman in a self-help group which I visited during my trip to Afghanistan. Although I’d read about family-wide opium use, it was quite different hearing of it firsthand. As we sat drinking tea, the women in the group were discussing family planning, and the importance of breastfeeding frequently as a means of increasing the gap between subsequent children.
Afghanistan has some of the world’s highest maternal and infant mortality rates. It was a privilege to see ASET’s Midwifery Consultant working patiently to improve education around pregnancy, birth and family planning as she negotiated the setting-up of similar groups for women to the one I visited.
Help raise £40,000 for a new kindergarten
ASET has recently been asked to build a Kindergarten for the children of female teachers at one of the biggest girl’s schools in Mazar e Sharif.
At present many of the teachers do not turn up as they need to be at home looking after their own children. With the provision of a Kindergarten, the school will have more and better female teachers and therefore a higher standard of education for the girls, vital in a country where the current literacy rate amongst women is only 15%. To achieve this we need to raise £40,000 for the kindergarten building.
If you would like to donate towards this project please click here.
Help raise £25,000 for Wells Digging Project
We are proposing to launch another water project and to do this need to raise £40,000.
The aim of the project is to try and decrease the infant mortality rate (1 child in Afghanistan dies every 23 seconds) and chronic malnutrition among children, by providing clean drinking water and basic training in hygiene and sanitation. Five wells will be dug and training programmes provided for five neighbourhoods, benefitting over 1500 people. We believe it will make a dramatic impact in the area.
If you would like to donate towards this project please click here.
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