Afghan Women/Girls reach 4th Grade Literacy

Dear Friends,

Exciting Opportunity!

We are competing today for a share of a $50,000 bonus fund. The more we raise from you by midnight ET the larger the share of the pot we will get.

There is MORE! The two projects below ALSO receive 50% Match from Safer World Fund so your gift will be worth 50% more and then a percent more than that from Bonus Day.

Can you help?

1073 Save Rural Afghan Women and Children with Healthcare

1155 Fast-Tracking Education for Afghan Women and Girls

Newsflash: Dr. Yacoobi  is one of BBC 100 Women 2017!

AIL’s innovative Mobile Literacy Project continues to be popular with students and to receive international attention. In September, Dr. Yacoobi was named a UN Solution Maker and invited to present this project at the UN Solutions Summit at the UN General Assembly in New York. This AIL project was one of only 11 projects chosen from around the world, as exceptional solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals. The photo is of Dr. Yacoobi’s presentation at the UN event.

So far in 2017, there are 309 females who have completed the course.  Of these 254 ended the course reading at a 4^th grade level and 55 at a 3^rd grade level.  

"I am Riahana and I am 25 and live in a village of Herat. All of my family are illiterate. We are so poor and just seek to fill our empty stomachs and do not think of being educated. Now that my brothers have grown older, they go to school. They asked my father “Why does Riahana not go school? If she goes to school, she could help us with our lessons.” Their insistence had an impact on my father’s thinking. My father told me that he could not afford any expenses but he would let me go.

The government schools are free and I decided to go to school, as I was keen to learn. The principal told me that as I am in my middle-age I could not participate in the children’s school. I accepted this and I always regretted that I cannot meet my dream of being educated. I believed that I had lost the excellent opportunity in the education field.But, I heard that there is a Mobile Literacy Class for the women like me. As female teachers teach it, my family let me enroll. I follow the program with interest and practiced day and night to prove that women could accomplish what they want. After passing four months of this class I have changed completely. I became educated. I can easily read the banners and the signs on the street and I can write and send text messages to others. I am going to continue my education in the Literacy class. Thank You Prof. Yacoobi for starting this useful class for helping us shape our futures."

Thank you for your continued support.

AIL is working towards: SDG Goal 4 – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. 

Follow our CEO on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/SakenaYacoobi

Dear Friends,

AIL provides a variety of educational opportunities for women and girls One of the most popular is the 4 month long Mobile Literacy Class. So far in 2017, there are 306 females who have completed the course or are doing it now.  

Literacy levels are low in Afghanistan. Literacy is such a vital skill and so many need to acquire it. Creative and new ideas to help with this educational endeavor are always needed and used by AIL.  Young people are aware of the lack of literacy in their society.  This prompted some students to create a literacy app for a worldwide competition. 

AIL supports a coding course for girls at the Professor Sakena Yacoobi High Schools. There are two high schools in Kabul and two in Herat. In April, as we reported before, the Herat school won first place for Afghanistan in the girls world Technovation Challenge competition. The competition was for creating mobile phone applications. The team won with their education app teaching literacy. The all- girl team went on to compete in the semi- final round with 100 teams from around the world, but did not make it to the final six. 

“My name is Monema. I am a student at the Professor Sakena Yacoobi Private High School. I am a member of the "Youth Educator" team for the world Technovation Challenge. To create our app, we needed lots of information so we selected many literacy books. We worked in a group and collected the data we needed such as pictures and sounds.

We held meetings twice a week that usually took about two hours and we worked on our tasks at home too. We shared our experience in our weekly meetings and our mentor guided us as to how to work effectively. Overall, we worked on our app day and night.

Making this application looked very difficult to us, but we did not give up! To tell the truth, in the last days when the deadline approached, we worked from 7am to 7pm without feeling weary. We made some accessory tasks to be part of the World Technovation Challenge, as well as making the app. For instance, a pitch video, a demo video, a business plan and a pitch presentation and so on. We completed all of them successfully on time with the help of our mentor.  Fortunately our efforts were not wasted and we got through to the final competition as we received the top place among 18 other teams in Afghanistan.  We competed at the world level with 100 teams from around the world, but did not make it into the 6 finalist level.” 

Thank you for your continued support. 

AIL is working towards:

SDG Goal 4 – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. 

Follow our CEO on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/SakenaYacoobi