Stop extremism. Teach Afghan kids to embrace peace

For years, significant barriers have prevented any meaningful effort in providing much needed peace education to millions of deserving Afghan youth.  Because there has not been a clear directive and strategy about peace education from Afghanistan's Ministry of Education, many organizations working in Afghanistan have continued to pursue their individual peace education programs and initiatives without much coordination.  Despite the good intentions of these organizations, peace education is not delivered and taught in a consistent manner.

All of that is beginning to change, now that HTAC's is piloting Afghanistan's first national school-based peace education curriculum.  Our initiative, endorsed by the Ministry's Curriculum Department represents months of intensive research and development where our team of educators has redesigned HTAC's (already successful) peace education program, including a complete curriculum for Afghan public schools, grades 7 through 12.

Within the last 6 months, the new curriculum has been developed and translated into the two major languages of Afghanistan; Dari and Pashto.; several school sites in Jouzjan Province (one of Afghanistan's 34 provinces) have been targeted to receive the new curriculum; teachers at these schools have been trained; parents (of enrolled students) have received orientations; and the new program was launched in June of 2013.

The success of this pilot and the final approval of the curriculum by the Ministry will signal and major breakthrough, allowing the eventual delivery of peace education throughout Afghanistan, impacting an estimated 4 million deserving boys and girls.