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Ismael Mayar Primary School - Wardak2010 update:
We have received a very generous donation and committment by the Rebuilding Afghanistan Foundation to again support our school again for the school-year April 2010 to March 2011. We are very grateful for their continued support.
2009 update:
We are thankful for the generous and continued support this year of our principle donor, the Rebuilding Afghanistan Foundation.
Despite the ongoing security issues in Wardak, we are serving hundreds of students: 448 boys and 10 teachers (at the school), 103 girls (in 4 home-schools in with 4 teachers), who otherwise would have no school available to them. Boys are in grades 1-7th grade and girls in grades 1 - 3rd. (Pashto is used primarily in all their classes, which follow the curriculum of the Ministry of Education.)
Shifts at the school:
Grades 1, 2, and 3 study at school for 4 hours
Grades 4, 5, and 6 study at school for 5 hours
7th graders attend school for 6 hours
Above photo shows a girl's class in a home-school (part of A4T school #3).
2008
The Rebuilding Afghanistan Foundation has been one of the principle donors to Ismael Mayar Primary School for the past four+ years. They generously funded the budget for both the school and home schools again in 2008. We are grateful for their generous donations.
2007 Report
The Ismael Mayar Primary School (A4T School # 3) is located in Shekh Yassin, Wardak province, about one and a half hours drive from southwest of Kabul. It is the only school within a three mile area and boys come from two other villages as well to attend classes. There are 270 boys attending the school from first to sixth grades.
Due to the deteriorating security in Wardak, the girls, who attended the school from October 2006 to April 2007, have not yet returned to the school building. However 55 girls have been attending first and second grades in home schools in the village since the summer. If it is determined that the students have been successful in their classes we hope to add third grade in 2008 and other grades later.
The school is staffed with ten part-time teachers, one principal and two guards and there are two teachers for the home school classes. The principal, Mr. Mohammad Aman, supervises the classes and has ongoing meetings with his school staff on a regular basis. He also meets with the parents of the students and the village elders every two months in order to improve the situation at the school.
The normal school year for this A4T School is from March 22 and until early December. However, since the boys only began attending the school in October 2006, they continued to study their lessons during last winter.
All subjects such as literature, geography, biology, math, science, Holy Quran, and drawing are taught in Pashto. Dari language classes are offered as well. Students also play volleyball at this school.
As we reported last year, our school was attacked and two classrooms burned in April 2006 (please see our 2006 Annual Report). We applied for and were awarded a grant this year of $2,500 from the Society of Afghan Professionals (SAP) in Fremont, California for the repairs of the fire damage to our school. This grant will cover most of the cost to replace the roof, ceilings, walls, doors and windows of the two damaged classrooms.
We greatly appreciate SAP generous grant to A4T for this purpose and their commitment to fund education projects in Afghanistan. We also want to thank our A4T engineer, George Nez, who helped design and build the special conical roof sections at each end of the school in 2004 and 2005.
The Rebuilding Afghanistan Foundation has been one of the principle donors to Ismael Mayar Primary School for the past three years. They are impressed with our continuous work and progress as an organization and will fund this school’s budgetagain in 2009. We are grateful for their generous donation and the contributions by other past donors to this project.
Our A4T 3 School needs funds for electricity, solar panels, and toilets. The school also needs textbooks, a library and books as well as computers. If you would like to help us provide any needed items to this school, please learn how to donate here.
Report from 2006:
On February 2, 2006, some arsonists burned about 60 chairs in our school in Shekh Yassin, Wardak Province, in an attempt to destroy the entire building. The one guard who had been hired was not present when the attack happened. Following this incident, the school director hired three guards and requested that the Governor of Wardak provide arms for the guards and police troops be stationed there. Unfortunately, his request was denied and on April 3, 2006 the school was attacked at night by a group of ten men. The guards were tied up (then later released) and were told that the teachers would be in danger if they continued to teach. The school was partially burned but the fire was put out by Massud Mayar, project manager, and reported to the police and the governor.
In May 2006, three others schools in the area were attacked and two were burned. Following these attacks A4T and Partnership for Education and Peace in Afghanistan (PEPA) launched a national appeal in the US to save the Afghan schools in danger of being destroyed by terrorism. We also requested that Mr. Ehsan Mayar, the land donor for the Wardak School, visit Shekh Yassin to discuss the school with members of the community. Mr. Mayar came away with a positive report and agreed to turn the deed of the land over to the community. However, A4T needed more guarantees from the village and we closed the school for the safety of our students.
On June 23rd, a meeting was held in Kabul to discuss the future of the school and health clinic with six representatives from Chak District in Wardak and the Director of Ismael Mayar School, in Shekh Yassin and A4T board members. The delegation members assured A4T of the community`s ongoing commitment to education. They told us that many of the 18 schools in the Chak District had been burned or targeted and that security was a problem throughout the Province. We stressed that it was difficult to find money for the Wardak school and that the school is funded by private donors and foundations, not from other sources. We explained A4T`s efforts to get help from the head of security for Wardak and from the Governor and how there were still no positive results from the investigation.
They assured us that from now on they would pay more attention to the school. We concluded that the Mayar family needs to share power in the village and A4T will only operate through the Shura`s structure, a structure based on local mutual consultation, that was non-existent two years ago.
In fall of 2006, the security in the district worsened and there was fighting ten miles from the school. The strong message conveyed by the villagers was that they wanted only boys to attend the school until it was safe for girls to attend -in a separate shift. We felt the safety of the teachers and students in the village was primary. We reinstated the operational funding for the staff and opened the school on October 1, 2006 to 200 boys. Temporary repairs to the building roof were made by the village, as requested by A4T. We hope to rebuild the damaged roof and walls of the school in the future.
We will continue to help the people of Afghanistan and be stronger in the future to meet the many challenges facing our projects. We will do it for the sake of our students for whom we represent the only hope for a better future.
Report from 2005
In mid 2005, Afghans4Tomorrow finished the construction of the 10-classroom school complex in Shekh Yassin in the Wardak Province. The school is named Ismael Mayar Primary School after the late Ismael Mayar, an important personality from Wardak, recommended by the villagers. This magnificent building was a collaborative effort between A4T, our donors, and the community in Wardak who helped with some building of the school and surrounding wall. A mixture of traditional architecture and modern technology, it took two years to build this school. For more details please click here.
The school opened on October 12, 2005 for 61 girls the first day and 120 a week later, from first through third grades. The students were from 6 to 14 years old. After some meetings with community leaders and suggestions from Dr. Rohsanak Wardack, the only woman mobile gynecologist in Wardak Province, it was decided that the school would be for girls who had little or no education. The school would operate year-round to catch up the students to their peers and also have some vocational training classes.
The school can house up to 500 students in two shifts.
The school was inaugurated in the presence of the Deputy Minister of Education, the President of Primary Education, A4T president, A4T volunteers, Compassionate Service International, members of the community, students, teachers and the police force. We wish to thank Chloe Bryer, Dr. George Nez, Mr. Ehsan Mayar, Massud Mayar, The Rebuilding Afghanistan Foundation, Partnership for Children and Peace in Afghanistan, Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD), Dudley family, the Afghanistan Foundation, Partners for Peace in Afghanistan, the Episcopal Diocese of New York A4T, members and volunteers, and many individual donors for trusting in the success of this project.
At this school we have nine teachers, a Principle and two guards.
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