Empower Afghan girls with computer skills

Like many Afghan girls of her generation, Nagina has dreamed of a better life and that has long meant finding a school that offered computer education and one day, earning a degree in computer science so she can use her education and skills to seek a productive job and help her family.  But the reality of living with six other family members and little money ever available, there has been on-going pressure from Nagina's parents for her to leave school, find a suitable husband so the family can receive short-term financial gain from the husband's family.  Nagina has always managed to convince her mother and father that she should complete her schooling, but for years, becoming computer literate has always been out of reach.

In Afghanistan, finding a school that provides computer education can be very difficult, even though the Ministry of Education has deemed computer education a requirement for high school students.  Unfortunately, many schools simply do not have the financial resources to establish even the most basic computer laboratories, leaving far too many girls without opportunities.  In other cases, many schools who do have computers are private and the tuition costs are far out of reach for most families.  Even if they were able to afford the costs, getting to these schools can often require traveling through insecure areas; a situation few Afghan families would ever consider for their daughters.  These barriers, along with her family's economic difficulties, almost derailed Nagina's dream of completing her schooling and studying the computer.

Fortunately for Nagina, she found a school that offered computer education; one of several supported by Help the Afghan Children, which was the first organization to introduce computers into Afghan public schools, and here she has thrived.  Now in 12th grade, she has learned MS Windows, Word and Excel and before she graduates, Power point presentations.  Nagina is grateful that she (along with her other classmates), can learn lessons and complete assignments for other classes on the computer.  By teaching girls real world computer applications, HTAC is preparing graduating girls to seek and obtain jobs in Afghanistan's expanding IT marketplace.

While it's true that today, more Afghan girls do attend school, family and cultural pressures often result in too many girls never finishing their education, let along developing marketable skills.  HTAC is doing its part to give Nagina (who wants to serve her country), and several thousand girls like her every year, a chance to beat the odds.

For most people in the West and around the world, the only news coming out of Afghanistan these days is the hotly contested presidential run-off election, charges of voting corruption, or the latest casaulties from a suicide attack.

But this past Spring, Help the Afghan Children enrolled another 3,750 girls in our computer education classes and for these deserving girls, gaining computer literacy and a chance to lead a proud, productive life are no longer a fantasy, but a realistic, achievable goal.

It was not that long ago when it seemed the most important thing was enrolling more Afghan girls in schools, and while those numbers began to steadily increase, a serious problem arose.  The overwhelming majority of girls graduating from high school had no marketable skills and earn a decent living.  Sadly, most of these girls were forced by their parents to marry (for the short-term economic gain of the daughter's family), and from pressure from their husbands, early child-bearing.

At the same time, a second problem was emerging that affected the entire country.  When the information technology marketplace burst upon the scene, Afghan government ministries, educational institutions, organizations and companies (large and small) were forced to hire people from other countries to fill I.T. related jobs because there were so few Afghans (especially women) who had such skills.  That meant, about 50% of Afghanistan's human resources (women) were not being utilized.

Help the Afghan Children, the first organization to bring cvomputer education into Afghan public schools, is doing its part to close this gap.  With our 2014 enrollments, HTAC has trained over 43,000 girls in computer skills and applications.  Earlier this year, we coordinated a historic real-time Skype between one of our schools in Kabul and their sister school in the United States.  In our classes, girls are learning how to develop spread sheets, power point presentations, and learning to navigate the internet and research information that helps them with homework assignments and projects. 

Our aim is not just teaching rils the technical applications of computers, but to give them real world skills, opportunities to secure computer-related jobs, and a new life.