Green Village Schools in Afghanistan

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"The dark phase is gone, now is the time for learning." - Camran

Purpose

Green Village Schools is a Portland, Oregon based non-profit group committed to building a future in Afghanistan. Our mission is to establish and maintain schools in Afghanistan that offer boys and girls a basic education in reading and writing in both Pashto and English, math, history, and science. Green Village Schools also seeks to create school health posts serving the students and local communities.

We believe that only through the education and good health of the youth can a real future for the Afghan people be assured.

News

Our Spring 2008 newsletter is now available in the archives section along with others. Or click here for a direct link.

GVS has partnered with NEED magazine. Now you can help GVS by subscribing to NEED. To learn more, see the donate section.

Pictures from our most recent trip are now available in the media section. Or click here for a direct link.

We have started construction on a library and several new classrooms. A computer lab is soon to come.

Current State & Goals

Currently, Green Village Schools operates one facility in one Afghan village. It consists of one 8-room school for boys, teaching grades one through six and one 8-room school for girls, teaching grades one through five. The schools are encompassed by a newly built security wall. Sanitary accommodations are inadequate. Thanks to our well, locals now have access to clean, filtered water instead of ditch water.

GVS would like to expand this first facility by adding grades seven and eight for boys and grades six through eight for girls. Building new latrines for male students is of importance. Female students now have a three-room latrine. We would like to add one grade per school per year until both schools have 12 grades. Long term goals include building and maintaining health posts as well as schools in nearby villages.

Troubling Facts about Afghanistan

The context in which Green Village Schools and other NGOs do their work is important. For those who do not know why Afghanistan is specially in need and deserving of our help, and desperate in the longstanding and persistent nature of its plight and the critical antidote of modern education to alleviate the situation, the following information should be helpful:

Some of the contributing factors mentioned by 2003 report of Save the Children were that 1 in 4 children under 5 in Afghanistan are severely to moderately malnourished and that, as of last year, 71% of the children of school age were not in school, 87% of the population does not have access to safe drinking water, and 92% of the babies are delivered without trained personnel present. The lack of women in secondary school seems to correlate to a high childbearing rate for girls 15 to 19 years of age. This, coupled with the lack of trained health personnel, can lead to tragic results.
Education is a priority to improve the health and wellbeing of all in dealing with these factors. No country deserves our help more in terms of changing this picture of a long-suffering population.

A Brief History

Green Villages Schools (Shin Kalay Showenzy) is the creation of Mohammed Khan Kharoti, a 59-year-old Afghan who was born a nomad and was illiterate until he was 12 years old. He grew up in Afghanistan where he finished primary school and nursing school. Through the sponsorship of an American physician, he attended middle school and high school in Lebanon, followed by college at Coe College, Iowa, and then received a medical degree in Afghanistan.

When the Russians invaded his country in 1979, he was forced to flee to Pakistan with his wife and children. Finally, he immigrated to the US with his family, and they now live in Portland, Oregon.

Realizing his dream, Mohammed established his first school in his home village of 11000 people while the Taliban still controlled his country. This first school had six girls and 10 boys in the first grade and grew quickly to 15 girls and 60 boys by that summer and split into two grades, taught by men who had finished high school in Afghanistan.

With $5000 donated by Kharoti and free local labor, the first school of three rooms was built; it is now used by boys. Classroom space for the girls was limited, so building a school for them was one of the first projects Green Village Schools has taken on and recently completed.

Progress was interrupted by the September 11 attack and the subsequent war. Mohammad stayed devoted to his dream of providing education to the people of Afghanistan and funded the school on his own. Patients and colleagues of Mohammad, inspired after having read about his quest in local newspapers, encouraged him to start a tax exempt charity to help his cause. The organization, Green Village Schools Incorporated, was founded in December of 2002 and, with the support of a diverse and qualified board, has become a beacon of hope for Afghans and Americans alike.
Other established nonprofits have freely provided assistance and advice as well, enhancing the efforts of GVS. While still young, GVS has reached tremendous heights and is accomplishing the difficult task of bringing the opportunities of education to the people of Afghanistan. GVS has managed to turn a school that started in a small guest room into the educational center of a large village with over 800 students including over 400 girls attending daily.