Stories & Updates

The odds are stacked against children getting educated if they are from the Khas Kunar in Kunar Province in rural Afghanistan. Many are from families too poor to spare them for the school day.

Even if they attend school, these Pashto-speaking children may need to learn other languages to progress because Afghanistan does not have a single national language.

Rural children may not be eligible to advance because scarce seats in classrooms usually go to members of a privileged family or clan, to children with better family connections or to children in Afghanistan’s capital or its other major cities

Some of Kunar Province’s children may not get educated because they are girls living in a society that values sons above daughters.

Kunar Province’s children also do not get as much help getting schooling from international charities because they live in one of the least secure parts of Afghanistan.

Finally, many of the rural schools operate without electricity, clean water or the technology needed to prepare students to succeed says Dr. Qayam Safi, an Afghan expat, naturalized U.S. citizen, author of One Life: An Afghan Remembers, and director of a Virginia-based charity is on a mission to help Afghanistan’s rural school children.

“Despite the obstacles, we’re optimistic. Since December 2013 we have installed solar panels to electrify three schools: a girls’ high school, a boys' high school, and a boys' middle school, in addition to the office of the Director of Education, in the district of Khas Kunar, Kunar, Afghanistan,” said Dr. Safi. Based on request from Principal of the Girls High School, ARS is planning to build ten classrooms for 700 students in the school.

Dr. Safi is seeking donations, volunteers willing to help raise money and look for schools interested in becoming sister schools to those in Khas Kunar. To learn more about the project and 501(c)3 Afghan Rural Schools (ARS), visit www.afghanruralschools.org. 

“We have connections to the villages, schools and local officials in Khas Kunar. My relatives teach at these schools, and I talk with them weekly, so I can be sure what we give will end up in the right hands,” said Safi.

Dr. Safi is seeking invitations to speak to audiences throughout the District of Columbia, New York and New England about his book, his organization, experiences growing up in Afghanistan, Afghan politics and the issues facing Afghanistan’s new government. He is the author of a memoir, One Life: An Afghan Remembers (Authors Press, $14.95. Dr. Safi has pledged all proceeds from book sales to Afghan Rural Schools. Contact him at (954-909-0216 or our e-mail address, info@afghanruralschools.org.