Three months ago Bill Frej was the point man for all of USAID development programs in Afghanistan. Now at the Santa Fe Institute Bill reports that under the Taliban only 300,000 students (none were women) were in school but that today under US programs there are 8 million and 40% of these are girls. USAID has, in addition, trained over 10,000 school teachers and built over 800 schools; supplied over 68 million text books for math and geography in Pashtu and Dari languages. The secret of the program’s successes has been a change in the last 14 months to “Afghanization” of the efforts, employing over 40,000 Afghan farmers and teachers. It is therefore Afghans who at great risk to themselves are taking education and agricultural changes to their villages. This is a great untold story and is worth listening to.
Bill Frej
September 25, 2010
KSFR, 101.11 FM, Santa Fe, NM
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