The Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund

Press Release
September 22 2009

Kiwi supported project in Afghanistan wins literacy award

A UNESCO Confucius Literacy prize has been awarded to a literacy programme in Afghanistan which has been supported by Kiwis through TEAR Fund NZ.

Warfare, strong cultural resistance to female education and lack of a writing system for the dialect being used, failed to derail the language development project for Afghanistan’s ethnic minority, the Pashai which is run by TEAR Fund’s partner SERVE, Afghanistan.

TEAR Fund executive director Stephen Tollestrup said people often underestimate the importance literacy skills play in creating a better life for the poor, their families and communities. It allows them to better share ideas and helps them lift their incomes.

The Pashai Language Development Project is a community-owned initiative which delivers meaningful literacy as well as livelihood, public health and nutrition education to around 1,000 Pashai men and women every year.

“One of the huge things about this is that Kiwis have played a part in the project’s success.”

The Pashai are an ethnic minority group living in Eastern Afghanistan. Pashto is the language of politics, economics and education in the region and until the Pashai programme was initiated, Pashai adults in some areas had no access to adult education and women and girls were denied formal or non-formal education of any kind, said Mr Tollestrup.

“Particularly hard hit were women who lost their husbands in the country’s long series of wars and were left to raise their families with little or no means of securing an income.”

The project will help the Pashai make use of print literature in their own language and in Pashto to access and share ideas and information, and equip them for productive employment opportunities and that Pashai will form part of the multilingual education curriculum in government schools, he said.

ENDS

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