I am an Afghan and in 2007 I founded the Nai Qala Association to honour the vision of my father who left his isolated village in the centre of Afghanistan, where he was a shepherd, and took his family to town to ensure that his sons and daughters would go to school and study.

My engagement is based on the determination to take that vision a step further and provide proper education and health-care delivery to communities in some of the most remote and neglected regions of the country. This is a concrete way of improving the respect for fundamental human rights in my country.

My hope is to contribute to a different image of Afghanistan – an image of engagement and achievement – and to convey the fact that Afghans have the same hopes and aspirations as all other people in the world: we are in search of respect and a better future.

• We improve learning conditions by:
  • Building school facilities; and equipping schools with teaching material;
  • Improving the qualification of teachers;
  • Improving the scientific capacities of students;
  • Bringing school to remote communities trough community based education;
  • Providing hygiene/toilet blocks, for each school we build; 
  • Protecting children’s privacy by building boundary walls, for each school we build.
• We contribute to prevent drop out by:
  • Providing early childhood education classes;
  • Talking with the community;  
  • Setting up motivation meeting with children, parents and teachers;
  • Reducing walking distance to school.

• We provide access to health services:
  • In 2011 we built a clinic that is positively impacting women’s and infants’ health, it is increasing vaccination coverage and provides basic health care to a population of >20’000.
• We increase health awareness and improve hygiene practices by:
  • Providing toilets and clean water in each of the school we build; and by raising awareness of schoolchildren through prevention messages;
  • Training thousands of preschool children on basic hygiene measures and informing their parents about health, hygiene and nutrition;
  • Promoting gardening initiatives to enhance the nutritional  status of the entire family.
  • Raising awareness and training pre-school teachers in first aid and good hygiene practices.