Tag Archives: preschool

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Special guests in the field

For the first time in Nai Qala’s history, a donor visits one of our projects.

Since 2007, Nai Qala has been implementing projects in remote areas of central Afghanistan. Since our very first project, the construction of a school in the village of Nai Qala, hundreds of donors, big and small, have made donations to support our work and make a difference in neglected communities. Without their generous contributions this  would not have been possible, but none of them have ever visited any of our many projects. In June 2021, for the first time, one of our strongest partners, the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency (SDC), came to visit some of our projects in remote regions of central Afghanistan.

A donor ready to go to the field

Switzerland is committed to improving access to quality basic education for all in Afghanistan and is Nai Qala’s main partner for its pre-school project; this program helps prepare children for elementary school, thus greatly increasing their chances of success and reducing the risk of dropping out. For just over a year the Swiss Development and  Cooperation Agency has been supporting our pre-school education project in Daikundi province and some of the most remote areas of Bamyan province, where many boys and girlsare not in school.  

In early 2021, Nai Qala made a presentation to SDC regarding the projects they support. SDC were impressed by the impact and importance of their support to children,  parents and rural communities. They expressed their deep desire and interest in carrying out a field visit and seeing the results of the Nai Qala association’s projects with their own eyes. Honored by the trust and commitment of its partners, Nai Qala accepted the challenge and organized a visit to the project for 3 members of the SDC team in Kabul.

Visit to pre-school classes in Bamyan province

At the end of June, Nai Qala took the SDC team to visit villages in Yakawlang district where the project is implemented. The main objective of the visit was to follow up on the pre-school project in Bamyan province. The delegation visited two classes and met with teachers and parents. They had the opportunity to see the changes brought about by the preschool program both in the children and in the communities. Indeed, all were very impressed:

“When we visited the pre-primary classes run by the Nai Qala Association […] we were impressed to see the social skills the children had developed. One proud father told us that his daughter was doing better than her older brother, who is already in primary school. All of the parents told us that their children are more focused, more respectful of their elders, and have better personal hygiene and table manners since they started attending the classes. This gives them a much better chance of succeeding in school, and coming from communities that are often neglected, these children need every advantage they can get.”

A sense of pride

The presence of the SDC delegation made the communities proud, as few outsiders take the time and risk to visit their homes. They would never have imagined that they would have such quality guests, who took an interest in the education of their children. People need inspiration and this visit helped these communities find it.

Equally important, the SDC team also made Nai Qala proud, as this field visit was not only to examine where and how Swiss funding is being spent, but also to see the conditions under which the Nai Qala Association works and the level of commitment required to ensure that we reach every child to provide them with a basic education. This experience will remain an important source of inspiration and motivation. It gave us a real boost of confidence.

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Expansion of our activities to the province of Daikundi

The expansion of our preschool program took us in to a third and fastmoving province

In 2017 Nai Qala began its preschool program in Ghazni province and following its success Nai Qala went on to expand firstly into Bamyan province in 2019, then in the spring of 2021 into the province of Daikundi. All together Nai Qala is currently running 65 preschool classes in 3 provinces. 

A young population looking for development opportunities 

Daikundi is a new province, created from the northern districts of Oruzgan province that were originally part of the Hazara ethnic region. The Province of Daikundi is surrounded, in the East, by the Provinces of Bamyan and Ghazni, where we already operate.

Daikundi, as a region, has historically suffered deep poverty resulting from an extremely tough geography and unforgiving mountainous region, that kept its people isolated and excluded from most development initiatives. The harshness of the region has created a strong social cohesion among its inhabitants which has made Daikundi one of the most stable provinces in Afghanistan.

A socio-economic survey revealed that half of the population of the province is aged 15 years or younger with the youth aged 15-24 years comprising 20.6 percent of the province’s population, implying therein a very young age structure. This supports the fact that the total fertility rate recorded in the province is high at more than 7 children per woman.

The main sources of income in Daikundi are farming and foreign labor, mainly in Iran. The cultivation of almond trees has recently come to represent a new hope, bringing some income, as the leading cash crop, and providing people with an improved horizon and some prospects for the future.

The central part of the province and the area surrounding the provincial capital, Nili, is home to many internally displaced people who have left a harsh life in the mountains where the land is barren and inaccessible, often with a persistent lack of water, in search of opportunity and a better life. In addition to these internally displaced people, many returnees from abroad are now settling and starting their lives anew in the region. 

Our Preschool program will address the need of this new rising population 

In the spring of this year, we opened 20 preschool classes in the surroundings of Nili. Our young beneficiaries are mostly from internally displaced families and are living below the poverty line. One of our classes is located in a community composed mainly of former refugees who have returned from abroad. The inclusion of refugee children in a preschool program is very important to the Nai Qala Association. Indeed, the life of a refugee is hard, they are constantly excluded, but their return home is also difficult, as resettlement may not be in the hometown, and life must start again from scratch. 

Our preschool classes also welcome a large number of orphaned children. Since Daikundi is a very poor province and very little attention has been paid to development, a remarkable number of men have left in search of work. Driven by poverty, many of them were recruited into the army and fought on the frontline but few returned home. Fatherless children often suffer exclusion and, in most cases, are even abandoned by their mothers when they remarry.

The preschool program in the province of Daikundi targets a new rising population within a dynamic and fastmoving society. People have just settled or are settling in the region of Nili, which makes our investment likely to be sustainable on the longer term. We believe that we can give hope to children and their families through a preschool program. We also have to keep in mind, Daikundi is not a prosperous province with many opportunities and developments. As many communities in Afghanistan, those in Daikundi are going through a tough path. We are especially proud to provide a chance to give a hopeful future for their children. 

We were very pleased to inaugurate our preschool education project in Daikundi and to start investing in its children’s future. We look forward to accompanying this brave community, drawing inspiration from them and together implementing important initiatives to contribute to change in this society.

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The impact of preschool on hygiene in the family

Every year, the death of thousands of children  in Afghanistan could be prevented by using toilets and washing hands. This is why several NGOs are spending millions of dollars to provide latrines throughout the country.

Some villages in the areas where we run our education projects have been equipped with brand new toilets, but these have shockingly been left  unused. People are accustomed to going to the toilet in the open air, although they are likely to fall ill from hygiene-related diseases and are at risk of being attacked by animals, especially at night. Toilet culture has not yet reached the stage of becoming a habit, but this is changing.

Thanks to our preschool program and our very young ambassadors, these toilets are now being used! Marzya, mother of Maria, 5 years old, says “My daughter, since she has been attending pre-school, insists on using the toilet and makes comments about her parents, about how indecent it can be to go outside to go to the toilet next to the house. She has put us all under moral pressure, including our neighbours… so we cannot imagine our life without a latrine“. Aqella, another mother, comments: “Fatima, 6 years old, is one of my 6 children. She uses the latrine and considers that going to the toilet is part of her dignity. She also puts pressure on the whole family! Now the toilet is part of our habits and we are even embarrassed to see how much we have relieved ourselves just by sitting outside our house.”

Nai Qala’s preschool program teaches basic hygiene rules such as hand washing, tooth brushing and the use of sanitary facilities. Thanks to these simple habits, dignity is restored as the whole family can use the toilet and no longer has to squat outside.

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Learning to play with toys

Playing with toys is a new experience for preschool teachers from remote communities.

Nai Qala’s preschool program is designed to provide young children with a range of experiences that help them develop skills and attitudes that will enable them to make good use of lifelong learning opportunities, which is why play is an important component of the curriculum. However, playing with toys is not part of the culture and is not always understood in isolated communities.

Teachers felt uncomfortable playing with toys.

Women teachers from the Yakawlang district who have been teaching a preschool class for a year participated in a three-day refresher course organized by Nai Qala association; it was an opportunity to exchange experiences and deepen their knowledge about early childhood and education. For the Nai Qala team, such a workshop is also an opportunity to gather feedback from teachers on the past school year and to get ideas to improve the training of future teachers. 

A big lesson learned from the three days is that play and toys can represent abstract concepts that are sometimes difficult to grasp. We took it for granted that playing with construction toys develops the imagination and allows children to inspire each other, but this was not the case for teachers who never had the opportunity to play with “western” toys in their own childhood. Indeed, construction toys bewildered many teachers who felt lost and confused, so in some kindergarten classes, Lego bricks and wooden blocks were left out.

Experimenting to understand the role of toys

A few days later, Nai Qala trained 33 young women in preschool education. After learning about the theory of the role of play in children’s development, the future teachers were given the opportunity to experiment with some construction toys and to play by themselves. It was very touching to see these young women playing with bricks and blocks. At first puzzled and wondering about the meaning and use of the different shapes, they used their imagination, became enthusiastic and let their creativity express itself to such an extent that the trainers lost a bit of control of the class. 

“I always thought toys were just for kids’ fun. Something not very important and serious. But I found out during the teacher training that the play session was one of the most important ones in the course. Wooden blocks were available and we had to build something. It took us an hour to think, discuss and imagine a construction with meaning. Then I realized that the blocks are much more than just pieces of wood, there is something deeper.”
A NQA children’s school teacher in Bamyan province.

Very proud of their own achievements, the trainees understood the importance of using these toys for children. Fun, excitement, joy, concentration, initiative, coordination, curiosity, creativity, inspiration, collaboration, perseverance are all words inspired by their play time. 

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Opening up to the idea of pre-school education

Even those who are the most recalcitrant eventually end up supporting pre-school

Nai Qala Association started its pre-school program in the Nai Qala valley in 2017. The objective was to provide pre-school for all the children from the villages in the catchment area of the 3 schools that Nai Qala built there between 2007 and 2010.

Nai Qala’s employees were able to convince 9 villages to take part in the program, but there was one village that was not interested in pre-school. The villagers did not want to meet the Nai Qala team. They were not ready and did not understand the need for the program. When the local community refused to meet the team in 2017, of course it was extremely difficult to leave the village while knowing that many children were being left behind and missing out on such a program. This was a very sad moment… 

The Nai Qala pre-school program has been a success

Nai Qala Association successfully started its program in the other 9 villages and the parents and communities soon realized that this program was even better than they had imagined. Their children came home with many positive changes. They noticed how their children had improved social skills and had more of an awareness of their environment and their family; from greetings and politeness, to being able to identify basic reading and writing at a very young age. In addition, the children started to have more self-confidence and develop a sense of identity and pride that was hard to imagine before. Most importantly the community realized how the parents are involved in the education of their own children through parent-teacher meetings as an integral part of our pre-school program.

The community changed its mindset

It was not long before the recalcitrant village heard good things about the program and developed an understanding for what it was about. In particular they were convinced by the fact that parents were able to contribute by taking part in the parent-teacher meetings. The village started to regret their initial reluctance to open up to the idea of pre-school and felt left out. They observed and followed closely how the program was implemented elsewhere and then they held several meetings and organized classes themselves until eventually in the spring of 2019 they invited Nai Qala’s team members to the village and announced that they were now ready to set up a pre-school class. 

As part of our pre-school program, we hire a teacher directly from the community to teach the children, but in the case of this village it was difficult to find someone locally who was suitably qualified to be a teacher. We finally found a young lady who had only graduated from 8th grade but we decided to hire and train her, so she was capable of leading a class. 

Now in this village the parents are present at each parents’ evening and realize the importance of education. This story shows that the community itself once it was convinced by the program it welcomed it. This is the key to change! Any society will only develop when it  is itself convinced and ready. Then it will participate fully in the program which will be successfully sustained. Our pre-school program is community-based, and the active participation of the local community is crucial.

We are very proud to be part of such long-lasting change in those remote rural regions. It is thanks to the Nai Qala Association that that village and others like it opened up to the idea of education and its importance for their children’s future.