School Starter Kits: Mini Science Labs and Mini Libraries

Project Title: School Starter Kits: Literacy and Science
AWRC and CW4WAfghan Kabul Office
Project Location: Kabul, Laghman, Parwan and Panjshir 
Project Amount (US$): $750, $1,000 or $1,500/kit

Reinforcing Literacy: Promoting a Reading Culture

CW4WAfghan’s projects focus exclusively on education, from our training of primary and secondary school teachers to running adult literacy classes for women who never had the chance to go to school. But literacy thrives most when learners have access to reading material. Yet, schools lack even textbooks and rarely have anything resembling a school library or lab. The public library system in the country has been decimated, and most books found in Afghanistan are imported. We have been working to provide access to books in conjunction with literacy classes in communities that have requested our support to establish village library & literacy centres. For example, in a rural district of Kabul province called Dara Valley, we are supporting six centres where women are learning to read and write, and where they also have access to a small collection of local language books. The female literacy rate has skyrocketed in these areas from almost 0% when we started. In districts where we’ve trained in-service teachers, we’ve so far equipped 84 schools with School Library Starter Kits, as well as Science Lab Starter Kits.

The Able Box Libraries

The Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU) works with Afghan professors to write, illustrate and publish high quality books for new readers on a variety of topics, from animal husbandry to history to poetry. These books are in Dari and Pashto and are printed in Afghanistan. This is unique in a country largely lacking a local publishing industry, and where access to reading material is extremely limited, especially in rural areas. CW4WAfghan purchases the Box Libraries from the ACKU to equip schools with their first library, as well as the village library and literacy centres that we support.

What's Next:

During 2011/2012, CW4WAfghan is working to train another 2,000 in-service teachers in districts of Laghman and Kabul provinces. Our teacher training focuses on hands-on learning, and we aim to provide each school participating in science training with a small science lab.
Fully equipped school science lab (small): $1,000
Please contact us if you can help: info@cw4wafghan.ca.
Small (210 book) library: $750