Community Village Schools

Early Childhood Education Classes

PARSA has a three-year old program of early childhood development classes in six villages in the rural district of Paghman that has gained recognition as one of the best in the country. This year, we will open a course in each village for children of the mothers who are registered in our village school. Providing nutritional meals, age appropriate learning activities, and supervised "mother-child" play and discipline, these classes give children a healthy beginning to their education and teach communities the importance of a compassionate and violence free childhood for the youngest in their communities.

Women’s and Girl’s Literacy and Accelerated Learning

PARSA has taught literacy and accelerated literacy courses for over ten years in Afghanistan. Accelerated learning courses prepare girls and women for the possibility of joining a public school. Our training programs integrate into the curriculum important topics such as healthcare education, human rights, child development, financial planning, and other subjects important to expanding and changing the quality of these women’s lives. Teachers will be women selected from the community and trained by our professional staff. They will teach as they progress in their own learning as teachers. As part of the community they are valued as women leaders as well.

Economic Development for Widows and Women "Head of Household"

In tandem with our literacy programs, in each village we develop a community garden to train our women and girls in kitchen gardening skills, how to process dairy products, raise poultry, can and dry fruits and vegetables, make face cream, and raise bees. Each woman participating in this program will be given small amounts of money to start their own garden or economic project and they will work with our staff to learn how to increase their household income by selling or trading their goods in the local area. In our pilot program, participating women have been able to become independent from their families quantifiably, increasing the quality of their lives. Women in this program who are working successfully on their own products will receive a solar oven from the New Hudson Foundation to use in their produce processing and for family cooking. PARSA is working with New Hudson Foundation to create alternatives to fuel use that is degrading the environment.

Selected women who are skilled artisans will be making handcrafts that will be sold for a "fair trade" wage in the PARSA gift shop in Bamyan City and in Kabul.

The Mobile "Well-Being" Clinic

Every project that PARSA conducts has a support staff of physiotherapists, psychosocial trainers, community-based health care workers, and case managers who are being trained in basics of social work. In the Hazarajat, villages will be visited weekly by our staff to work with mothers, children and the disabled in the village on their health. Our women will be trained in our "peer-counseling" psychosocial training and our teachers will facilitate support groups for them. This program has been conducted in Jhoghari by psychosocial trainers with a reported reduction in family violence.

Women and children who have medical issues that cannot be treated at the village level will be transported to the nearest clinic or hospital and supported by our well-being staff while the patients recover.

Community Participation

Villages will be selected for this project on the condition that they contribute land for a garden and space for teaching. PARSA will be training women from the village to teach early childhood classes and hiring teachers from the area to live in the villages. Children and girls from the community will be allowed to participate in the school when room allows for a small fee. PARSA staff will work with the communities to insure that this project is contributing to the community and those members not participating directly in the project benefit from the success of the project.

Project Monitoring

At PARSA we monitor our programs by making sure that we have a monthly schedule of training and support for our teachers conducted by our professional national staff, and by recruiting international volunteers who routinely visit our villages to provide support, new ideas, and professional evaluation of the progress of our projects. Our "well-being" staff works using a "case management" model. They work with and report on the progress of each family in each village, providing specific feedback into our program development.

Teacher Training in Bamyan City

PARSA has an excellent teacher training system developed over the last three years in partnership with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). We look forward to conducting teacher training not only for our own teachers, but also for teachers in other organizations in the Hazarajat and for teachers in the public school system. We hope to partner with two other INGO’s in the area to develop an outstanding curriculum for teacher training which we will conduct in our offices in Bamyan City.