By Stephen Perlman | Consultant, HTAC
Everyone told us it couldn't be done. They told us it was too risky. Go to Kandahar, Afghanistan, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, and try to educate thousands of vulnerable Afghan kids about peace.
But that's exactly what we did. After months of painstaking negotiatiion with provincial and local officials in the very conservative region of Kandahar, HTAC implemented a bold, audacious project. We trained over 1,100 teachers and brought our peace education program into 22 Kandahar City schools, enrolling over 36,000 students.
Many of these students came from families that had been sympathetic to the Taliban's rigid ideology and it was not that long ago when many of the same teachers would regularly beat and threaten their students as a way to discipline them; where the concepts of toleration, and respect for other viewpoints were non-existent.
After fourteen months the results were in. 84% of all teachers had abandoned corporal punishment practices and were role modeling positive behaviiors in the classroom, creating a safe, nurturing learning environment that allowed students to ask questions and offer opinions without the fear of being beaten. Fighting, bullying and harrasment among students plummeted from an average of 880 per month to onbly 285 at all school sites, and 91% of enrolled students were demonstrating three or more of HTAC's critical peace action behavirors, including the use of non-violent conflict resolution to prevent or break-up potential fights.
Perhaps more impressively, was the impact of this program in the homes of these students. HTAC received over 700 unsolicited letters from parents and local community leaders telling us about the dramatic (positive) changes in the behaviors of their sons and daughters and that local councils were now beginning to incorporate the lessons of peace, respect and cooperation into their discussions and practices.
The lure of extremism continues to be a major threat to the stabilization of Afghanistan, but we are confident that the overwhelming majority of these youth have and will continue to reject extremist ideology and the violence it breeds and instead embrace the basic principles of peaceful everyday living.
Help HTAC spread peace education to other regions of Afghanistan.
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