Since 1996
Impact 9 million Students 275,298 Centers 326 Teachers Trained 19,886 Civil Society Members Trained 8,436 Patients 1,488,722 Health Education 2,044,559 Trained in Health Workshops 8,888 Year 2011 Served Annually 420,432 Students 19,205 Medical Clinics 5 Learning Centers 25 Afghans Employed 480 | Impact_Impact Review
AIL and MDGs Evidence of AIL’s Overall Effectiveness Activities and Impact of Afghan Institute of Learning 1996-2011 Since its inception in 1995, AIL has positively affected the lives of millions of Afghans. More than 70% of the beneficiaries have been women and girls and most of the men trained in pedagogy, human rights and leadership teach girls or work with females. Years have been spent developing AIL’s basic foundational programs of providing academic and skills-based education in diverse, community-based Learning Centers, training teachers in interactive, critical thinking methodologies, training members of civil society in human rights, women’s rights, leadership, and peace, and provides health education and health care through its clinics and Community Health Workers. AIL’s innovation is in its holistic approach to providing the basics of health and education to bring those Afghans who are at a basic survival existence into healthy, literate individuals as one package. As Afghans become more educated and healthy, they are able to move forward. In order to significantly impact the lives of Afghans, AIL has:
AIL and the MDGs AIL works to achieve progress in Afghan society towards the Millennium Development Goals of eradicating poverty and hunger and gender equality and empowering women. Each of its Learning Centers is allowing women to become literate, to open up a whole new world to their learning about their own human rights, gender equality, and leadership capabilities. They are learning to think for themselves, therefore empowering them to be able to move forward. Learning Centers are also providing courses in employment skills which are opening the door to families having an income that was impossible in the past. The ability of these women to bring money into families is also helping break the cycle of no education. The income generated by the wives helps the husband understand the importance of both of them, and their children, having an education that will open doors to financial independence. The skills of AIL’s teachers and teacher trainers are consistently gaining strength. AIL teacher trainers continue to add new curriculum gained through their own teaching experience and outside sources. AIL recently added curriculum that teaches students how to handle their own money and save for the future, as well as hands-on learning about their native, natural environment. Teacher trainers are also adding new experiential learning opportunities to expand on critical thinking skills. Teacher training is held that brings students into the training so that the teachers could try their hand at the new methodologies they were learning in a classroom setting before implementing them in their own classes. It allowed them to get a true feel for how these new methodologies would work in the real world. It’s this forward thinking of the teacher trainers that making such a great impact on the overall educational system in Afghanistan. AIL was able to respond to a request from the remote Nooristan Province to train their teachers who had never had the opportunity to be trained. Those teachers were able to return and train more teachers and impact students who had never received anything close to quality education. The Afghan government consistently requests AIL to train its public school teachers as well. It has requested that AIL add more teacher training in the refugee camps in Pakistan so that when the Afghans return home there will be an adequate number of highly qualified teachers ready to help them. AIL is also making significant progress in the MDGs of reducing child mortality and maternal health. It is currently in the process of expanding its pilot Expectant Mother Workshop program where patients are referred to the workshop by the clinic or CHW. The workshop takes less than 3-hours on one day and provides expectant mothers and their birth attendants with detailed health education relating to pregnancy, normal and complicated delivery, breastfeeding and signs of high risk factors for mother or baby. The training is aimed at mothers who have limited access to deliver at clinics or hospitals. The goal of the Expectant Mother Program is to reduce maternal and infant injuries and deaths during childbirth and the immediate aftermath through access to information on proper care and encouragement to go to a clinic or hospital for delivery if possible. Following the workshop, a basic delivery kit is given to each pregnant woman and a scarf to each caregiver. Since the Expectant Mother Program started in November 2010 only a few mothers have given birth did so at home. The vast majority have had their babies at the clinic or hospital. This is remarkable in a society where home birth is the norm and where today’s mothers were most likely born at home and have mothers themselves or mothers in law who believe home birth the accepted practice as they themselves experienced it. These women have little or no access to women who have had births at clinics or hospitals so they are stepping out of the known in choosing a clinic birth. AIL is indeed making significant progress toward the MDGs. It’s basic education, health, and health education programs are the basis for Afghans moving forward. It is important to remember that Afghanistan is still a place where it needs to take the very first baby steps. There are so many people to reach to build that first layer of building block toward self-sufficiency. People must become healthy and literate, and must understand their most basic rights before they can move into AIL’s leadership programs and take action. Evidence of AIL’s Overall Effectiveness With a 15-year history of educational and health work in a devastated, war-torn area of the world, AIL has been able to continue serving Afghan women and children despite insufficient or nonexistent clean water, housing, employment, roads, buildings, health clinics, hospitals, schools, medicine, and food. AIL has been able to successfully introduce programs and services that have historically ignited controversy including women’s and girls education, LCs as meeting places for women, women’s human rights training, underground home schools for girls, and family planning education and services. By working together with community leaders, AIL has been able to expand the reach of these programs to benefit hundreds of thousands of women and children despite ongoing insecurity in the region and during the oppressive regime of the Taliban. AIL has also trained Afghan women to perform key management and administrative roles in government and civil society organizations. For example, the current governor of Bamyian Province is an AIL Leadership Workshop participant and former employee. Recognition for AIL AIL has received financial support from hundreds of individual and organizational donors, including 38 private foundations/charitable organizations and the United Nations Population Fund. With this support, AIL has been able to dramatically expand the scope and reach of its services. AIL Donors | AIL Awards |
