Afghanistan urgently needs new schools, additional classrooms and the repair and expansion of existing schools.

Classroom conditions for many Afghan students.

Clearly there is a tremendous demand for access to education in Afghanistan. The need for education support is especially crucial in Mazar city center, the area where we concentrate our work, where it is not unusual to find thousands of children attending one school that was built for just a few hundred students. The children attend school in two and one-half hour shifts during the day, starting at 7:00 a.m. Thousands of students still attend school in tattered tents, exposed to soaring temperatures in the summer, dust, dirt and the cold in the spring and fall. Not surprisingly, the students come from families that are living on just a few dollars a day and are most susceptible to extremists’ views and temptations.

Ayni has built and equipped 18 new schools in Afghanistan, repaired over 20 other Afghan schools, and drilled dozens of wells, currently serving some 20,000 students. We also manage Afghan teacher training programs, which have already taught several hundred rural teachers the fundamentals of teaching, as well as various disciplines in the classroom.