Terrorists will stop at nothing to keep Afghan girls from receiving an education.
"People are crazy," said
Razia Jan, founder of a girls' school outside Kabul. "The day we
opened
the school, (on) the other side of town, they threw hand grenades in a
girls' school, and 100 girls were killed.
"Every day, you hear that somebody's thrown acid at a girl's face ... or they poison their water."
There were at least 185 documented attacks
on schools and hospitals in Afghanistan last year, according to the
United Nations. The majority were attributed to armed groups opposed to
girls' education.
"It is heartbreaking to
see the way these terrorists treat ... women," said Jan, 68. "In their
eyes, a women is an object that they can control. They are scared that
when these girls get an education, they will become aware of their
rights as women and as a human being."
Despite the threat of violence, Jan continues to open the doors of her Zabuli Education Center, a two-story, 14-room building where 354 area girls are receiving a free education.
"Most of the (local) men
and women are illiterate," Jan said. "Most of our students are the first
generation of girls to get educated."
Seven small villages make
up Deh'Subz, where the school is located. Though Deh'Subz is not
Taliban-controlled, Jan has still found it difficult to change the
deep-rooted stigma against women's education.
On the evening before the school opened in 2008, four men paid her a visit.
"They said, 'This is
your last chance ... to change this school into a boys' school, because
the backbone of Afghanistan is our boys,' " Jan recalled. "I just turned
around and I told them, 'Excuse me. The women are the eyesight of
Afghanistan, and unfortunately you all are blind. And I really want to
give you some sight.' "
Jan has not seen the men since.
"You can't be afraid of
people," she said. "You have to be able to say 'no.' Maybe because I'm
old, the men are kind of scared of me, and they don't argue with me."
The Zabuli Education
Center teaches kindergarten through eighth grade. Without her school,
Jan says, many of the students would not be able to receive an
education.
"When we opened the
school in 2008 and I had these students coming to register, 90% of them
could not write their name. And they were 12- and 14-year-old girls,"
Jan said. "Now, they all can read and write."
Jan's school teaches
math, science, religion and three languages: English, Farsi and Pashto.
It recently added a computer lab with Internet access.
"They can touch the world just sitting in this house," Jan said. "The knowledge is something that nobody can steal from them."
To shield the students
from attacks, Jan has built a new stone wall to surround the school. She
also employs staff and guards who serve as human guinea pigs of sorts.
"The principal and the
guard, they test the water every day," Jan said. "They will drink from
the well. If it's OK, they'll wait. ... Then they'll fill (the) coolers
and bring it to the classroom."
Jan says she is so
scared of poisoning that school staff members accompany children to the
bathroom and make sure the children don't drink water from the faucet.
Additionally, the day guard arrives early each morning to check for any
gas or poison that might be leaked inside the classrooms. The guard
opens doors and windows and checks the air quality before any children
are allowed to enter.
"People are so much against girls getting educated," Jan said. "So we have to do these precautions."
Born in Afghanistan in
the 1940s, Jan traveled to the United States in 1970 to attend college.
Much of her family was killed or fled Afghanistan during the Russian
invasion. She stayed in the U.S., raised a son and opened a small
tailoring business. She became an American citizen in 1990.
Jan was always involved
in various philanthropic efforts and community organizations in Duxbury,
Massachusetts. She worked for many years to forge connections between
Afghans and Americans.
Then the events of September 11 shook her to the core.
"I was really affected
personally by what happened to the innocent in the U.S.," she said.
"It's something that you cannot imagine for a human being to do to other
human beings."
Almost overnight, Jan
turned her small store into a workshop and launched an exhaustive
campaign to help victims, first responders, U.S. soldiers and Afghan
children. Jan and community volunteers sent 400 homemade blankets to
rescue workers at ground zero and assembled and shipped nearly 200 care
packages for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. When she heard that U.S.
soldiers needed shoes to distribute to Afghan children, Jan and her
volunteers sent them more than 30,000 boxes of shoes.
Still, in the back of
her mind was a bigger dream. On a visit to her homeland in 2002, she
noticed that women and girls were struggling from years of Taliban
control.
"I saw that the girls
had been the most oppressed," she said. "The Taliban regime was very
brutal, brutal in the way that the woman had no place in their book. The
woman had no right. No say in anything."
Jan said that while her
life in America was fulfilling and rich, her dream was "to do something
for Afghanistan and to educate the girls."
So in 2004, she began
searching for land on which to build a school. In 2005, she began
fundraising through her Massachusetts-based nonprofit, Razia's Ray of Hope.
Then, on a visit to Afghanistan, Jan was able to negotiate with the
Ministry of Education to secure the land where the Zabuli Education
Center now stands.
"After five years now,
(the men) are shoulder to shoulder with me, which is such a great
thing," Jan said. "It's unbelievable how much they are proud of the
girls."
The school is entirely
free. Jan says it costs $300 to teach each girl for an entire year.
Those fees are covered by donations to her nonprofit.
Although she isn't there
every day of the week, Jan spends as much time at the school as
possible. She meets with her students' fathers and grandfathers two or
three times a year to address any issues and make sure she still has
their buy-in. She also deals with community elders and locals to ensure
that the school has local support.
Jan, who takes no money
for her work with the school, believes the education her students
receive will benefit not only future generations of Afghan women but the
country as a whole.
"My school is very
small. It's nothing big. But for this to start here, I think it's like a
fire. And I think it will grow," she said.
"I hope that one day
these girls ... will come back and teach, because I'm not going to be
there all my life. I want to make this school something that will last
100 years from now."