Afghanistan with a history of over four decades of war, conflict and social discrimination has never been an easy place to access education, especially for girls.

 Before Taliban, based on Ministry of education annual report - 2020, total number of students increased from above 1 million in 2001 to around 10 million in 2020 out of which around %40 of them were girls. However, in accordance with 2020 UNICEF report still 3.7 million kids did not have access to education among which over %60 were girls but still it was a great progress.

Thousands and thousands for girls were attend school with a hope for better life and a better tomorrow in Afghanistan while fighting poverty, insecurity and forms of discrimination such as early marriage or being considered as secondary member of family. Unfortunately, that narrow window of hopes was also shutdown in September 2021 after a regime change in Afghanistan.

By start of new education year in Afghanistan on 23 March all kids went back door of schools, all girls and boy, with a hope to re-start classes, meet classmates and start life and lessons, however under heavy pressure of what to wear and how to appear in society to be save and not threatened, but they were stopped behind schools’ locked doors. Sadly, girls of grade 7 to 12 were informed to wait for a second call, the second call which yet never realized.

Every sensitive human heart was touched and felt painful while seeing innocent afghan girls were crying and raising their voices bagging for their fundamental human right – right to access education! 

In this context we have decided to find ways to support Afghan girls and provide them learning opportunities online.

Who we are: Maktab93 Online School

We are a team of Afghans committed to support online and home to home education in Afghanistan using readymade or/ and make ready lessons of all grades. Currently we have most subjects’ lessons of grade 7 to 12 of afghan ministry of education curriculum recorded live. These recorded are taught by expert teacher and recorded. Also we have wide range of social media access to disseminate the program to everyone inside Afghanistan and even abroad who have access to internet. This effort is backed up with a professional website www.maktab93.com. This website is professionally designed to be able to operate with low speed interned and user friendly interface.

Afghanistan online School is a web based platform designed and development based on global experience of online education specially during COVID pandemic and we are trying to further adjust it with special requirements of Afghanistan.

Goal, Objectives and Components

Title: Afghanistan Online School supporting Access to Education for Afghan Girls

Our Goal: Ensure access to education for all afghan girls and boys with special focus on grade 7 to 12 standard girl students through online education system and dissemination of soft study material in accordance with global best practices.      

Objective and Expected Results

• To improve accessibility of online education for Afghan girls through online learning of standard Afghanistan curriculum of all key subjects developed by profession Afghan Teachers targeting at least one hundred thousand girl students all over Afghanistan;
• To make school lessons available for at least one thousand student/ groups of student by flash drivers (in first phase) initially in Kabul and other major provinces; priority will be given to places where access to mid and higher education is either denied and/or barrier exist;
• Enhance Afghan online school websites where students can participant in online exam and test their level of understand, get regular online support and guidance by our volunteer teacher;
• Mobilize and train 150 to 300 female volunteer teachers in at least 5 provinces to guide students in their daily problem solving with a small stipend and internet cost provided to them.

Components:

Today mostly in all parts of the country, education system is high disturbed and less accessible not only for girls of grade 7 to 12, but for younger and lower grade students and both boys and girls. On 23 March we all were witness of the level of desire for education among all afghans, specially our girl students which unfortunately still it is challenged and not granted by rulers. Our initiative will focus primarily on girl students of grade 7 and above, but it will be beneficial for everyone such as afghan immigrants in Iran (where access to education is limited) and boy students as well. Thousand to afghans who are living in Iran or has recently feed there are also facing problem as in Iran immigrant kids are not allowed to enroll government schools.

Considering the level of poverty and access to internet in Afghanistan, this initiative has two components of parallel efforts.

1. Web based online education: under this component the project focus on those girls of grade 7 and above who are living in cities and have access to internet. Under this component Afghanistan Online School enhance the existing platform of www.maktab93.com, where already an number of student (more than ten thousand students of grand 7 to 12) have access to and have been registered. However, everyone can use the learning material, but we will provide online coaching, online exam and direct access to guide teacher only for grade 7 and above girl students. 
2. Since a significant number of people either don’t have access to internet because of the high level of poverty or poor net quality, we will record at least one thousand flash card. To make sure the flash card is used effectively and by bigger number of student, we will make nearby students in to bundle of 15 and provide them with one flash card. This way we can ensure greater number of students will be able to access lessons (like making 15 classmates to one bundle). Under this component student may not need regular access to internet and we will provide this facility to poor and remote area students. Under this scheme we can cover 15000 students in this phase.

Call for funding support:

Every amount of money you support this foundation, it leads to expansion of outreach to greater number of students who needs and desires for access to education and will be thanks full of key important deference you make in their life and changing for better.

Specifically, all %100 of your donation will be used for the following areas and you can earmark it to any of the specific areas as well.

• Internet funding to every student who can’t buy internet to access lessons online;
• Internet and small stipend payment for teachers;
• Distribution of readymade lessons in flash cards;
• Development of study materials and platform;
• Study material support to students living under extreme poverty line.

To ensure accountable, we will publish regular financial and achievement reports through our website and can report to any key funder upon demand alongside will full list of our funders/ support.

If you want to see and get report back from end user of your financial support, you can sponsor expenses of number of kids and/ or teacher in any specific location and period of time.

Every child you sponsor and every cent you support here; in fact, you open a window of hope in depth of darkness for a small education loving heart of an afghan girl child.

 More Detail:

The Afghanistan online school is an online education program for Afghans and managed by a group of social activist from within and outside the country lead by Dr. Ahmad Fahim Tokhi. Dr. Tokhi is a well-known afghan civil society activist and highly acceptable social media channel administrator in Afghanistan with above 1.5 million followers.  To make sure we communicate our messages and send the opportunity of online education program of this project to every home in Afghanistan, along with many other communication tools and strategies, we are using his official face book page.

This project will use the existing curriculum of Afghan government and teaches the key subject depending the needs of every grade. Since currently deprivation of our girl students from education is our major concern, at this face we will focus on grade 7 to 12.

The platform is designed in a way that everyone can use the online classes without any challenge and just need to register in system. Every student needs to register to the website and immediately after registration she is receiving her user and password. After registration and login, student can start first lesson of each subject. After listening to the lecture, student will face a 10 multiple choice question exam of the lesson. Once student pass the exam (@%40 rate), then only she can go to the next lesson (if could not get the %40 mark, she need to repeat the video lecture and face the exam again).

Luckily immediately after launch of the online classes we notice grade response from our people, special girl students who don’t have access to formal education now, but also those who can’t learn well at school and need some sort of after school support.