As a result of their government requiring traditional Muslim education, girls and young women in Afghanistan lost their broader education dreams. They have lost their right to determine their own future; and have lost the capacity to inspire their children. Rotary Carlton will use the internet to change this.
The girls and women will be inspired to dream again!
The Rotary Club of Carlton received a grant of $5,000 from the Rotary Foundation towards a $15,000 project to improve the education of women and girls in Afghanistan through an internet portal.
The project is the brainchild of Dr Noor Shah Kamawal, an Associate member of Rotary Carlton, Dr Kamawal first joined the Club in 2012 for 18 months when he was undertaking a Masters Degree in Public Health at the University of Melbourne. Dr Kamawal has four daughters of his own and is passionate about education for girls. After his return to Afghanistan, Carlton Rotary funded the establishment of two schools for girls from external sources as well as a website for the youth of Afghanistan with support from the Rotary Foundation.
In the following eight years Dr Kamawal, who has a Canadian teaching qualification, established many education projects. After the return of the Taliban to government, Rotary intervention enabled him to come to Australia with his family in 2021.
Volunteers and hired teachers in Afghanistan, and volunteers in Australia, will develop an Internet Education Portal between the two countries. Hubs will be established in Afghanistan using laptop computers, allowing individuals and small home groups or mosque-based groups to access a web site that will enable individual or small group teaching. Multilingual instructors will be based both in Afghanistan and in Melbourne, connecting via the internet. Dr Kamawal will instruct volunteers about appropriate teaching strategies.
The aim of the project is to prepare the women and girls for entry to Australian universities to complete further studies and ready them for job markets in Australia and other countries; or perhaps to apply for a Rotary Year 11-12 grant scholarship.
Initially, two community home based classes for girls in Jalalabad City will provide IT, English language and other necessary prerequisite subjects. Further home-based classes will then be established in other provinces in Afghanistan. Students will be selected competitively, and provided instruction, online lessons and materials.
It is expected that continuation of this project once established would become autonomous and eventually self-funding.