Establish and Support Afghanistan Model Schools

As a developing country that is struggling to overcome an almost totally destroyed infrastructure, Afghanistan desperately needs to educate a new generation of Afghans in computer literacy to reverse this problem and better utilize its large untapped human resources; especially for young Afghan women.

Unless they acquire marketable skills, many bright, talented and motivated young Afghan women are doomed to early marriage and forced child-bearing.  Many others remain in poverty, even those who graduate high school.

HTAC's computer education program, the first of its kind in Afghanistan public schools, has made a difference for over 37,000 Afghan high school students, 52% of whom have been girls.  In fact, girls are proving to be just as skilled in learning key computer skills and applications - i.e. Microsoft Word, Excel, Power-Point, and navigating the internet, as boys and historically they outperform their male counterparts on their year-end computer testing.

For these girls, gaining computer skills is a life-changing experience, empowering them to seek and obtain meaningful computer-related jobs in Afghanistan's growing information technology marketplace, having control over their lives, and becoming proud, young, productive citizens of their country.

There are approximately 1 million unexploded landmines in many regions of Afghanistan. Tragically, the majority of landmine victims who are killed or maimed are children.

HTAC's landmine education program at 2 of our model schools in Laghman Province, a region still beset with a high number of landmines, is helping thousands of children learn about the dangers of these silent killers and how to spot landmines in and around their local villages.

Our program has three main objectives: 1- training groups of Afghan students at these schools in all facets of landmine education so they can (in turn), educate other students, children and members of local communities; 2- providing prosthetics and rehabilitative care for selected landmine survivors so they can lead more productive lives; and 3- interface with U.S. sister schools via the internet to educate American students about the program and facilitate their help in raising funds for landmine surviviors while promoting global citizenship between young people from these two countries.

Earlier this year, a team of students from Roshan High School (one of our model schools), went to a nearby village and taught children and adults Mine Risk Education (MRE), which they had learned in class. A few months later, the village elder thanked the school's program manager for "saving our lives". Several boys who had attended the MRE session found a suspicious object in a field, and because of their training, ran back to warn the village. What they found was a missile launcher with loaded missiles! Authorities were called and they extracted tha dangerous, unexploded objectives. Their actions saved untold numbers of people.