After all, there are children in that war-torn country who are so desperate for education they attend school in a tent, set in a desert, in three shifts per day while braving wind and sand storms, and cold weather — not to mention possible repercussion from the Taliban.

Since the late 1990s, Canadians in Support of Afghan Women (CSAW), which is affiliated with Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, has raised $450,000 to pay teachers’ salaries and provide school supplies including the tents.

Though the uncertain economy has CSAW, like all charities, facing an uphill climb to keep doing what it has been doing, it nevertheless quickly jumped at participating in a brand new project, turning the tent schools into a 10-room building of bricks and mortar.

It’s a job that’s to be done in short order, too.

A Calgary engineer, Ashsaque Khan, and his family have donated $40,000 of the required $70,000 U. S. for the job. Construction began in late September, with the Canadian engineer overseeing the process.

It must be completed before December when winter winds will blow and Khan’s work permit will expire.

So CSAW is cranking up its fundraising power and calling on Halton residents to once again remember the children of Afghanistan in an effort to come up with the remaining $30,000. The project has been dubbed Dare to Dream, Brick by Brick.

Supporting education

“CSAW is making this urgent request to our families, friends, colleagues and members of the community to donate immediately to this worthy project, which we hope will be completed within three months. Please be assured that 100 per cent of your donations will go directly to the project. Our work on behalf of Afghan students is completely on a volunteer basis,” states its website.

Donations (with tax receipts for $20 or more) will be accepted this Sunday as author Sally Armstrong’s new book, Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots, is launched. Armstrong will speak on the Uncertain Fate of Afghanistan’s Women with proceeds going to the school-building project.

Her talk will run from 2 to 4 p. m. at St. John’s United Church, 262 Randall St., in Oakville and the $25 admission will help toward the building of the school in Afghanistan. The school to replace the tents would be the only one available to the 500 students who are desperately seeking an education by currently attending the tent schools.

CSAW was actually born when a group of local women responded to Armstrong’s 1997 article in Homemakers magazine, Veiled Threat.

Through CWWA, it adopted a school in Afghanistan and eventually came to know educator Nazaneen Majeed.

Since the 1980s, Majeed has been providing education to young people in Afghanistan. She spearheaded construction of a school in Jalalabad in the mid 1990s, but abandoned it to the Taliban, which took it over for its own use in 1996. She fled to Pakistan.

Majeed returned in the spring of 2002 and found the school in relatively good shape and began holding classes again. Then two junior schools were established in tents in nearby villages.

Flash flooding forced the schools to be relocated to Sheik Misry, about 30 km outside of Jalalabad in the spring of 2007.

Jalalabad is a city in eastern Afghanistan, approximately 140 km from Kabul to the west and Peshawar in Pakistan to the east. It is the largest city of east Afghanistan, a social and business centre that is being rebuilt under NATO and UN direction after decades of war.

It has been receiving an influx of returning refugees, largely from Pakistan.

Majeed, as principal of the tent schools and that in Jalalabad, has been going back and forth from Jalalabad to Peshawar.

“She had to run and hide in a field at one point,” said Bev LeFrancois, one of the founders of CSAW, which is an offshoot of, and shares office space with, Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Services (SAVIS).

Linda Middaugh of Milton, another CSAW member who met Majeed, explained the school principal fled into the fields when the Taliban had come into an area where Majeed was renting a house, on a street where many NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) had homes. She fled to a field with two American women when the Taliban descended and burned all homes that bore the sign of an NGO. Majeed had not labelled her home and so it survived.

A helicopter arrived to pick up the American women and, after several days, Majeed returned to her home to collect a few belongings, and again made her way to the safety of Pakistan, returning when the situation had calmed.

Her status in being a Muslim, from the area, with a husband whose family is also from the area, and being a person who doesn’t draw attention to her work, apparently enables Majeed to fly under the radar of those who may interfere on a political level to the detriment of her students .

However, WHAM (Women of Halton Action Movement) members say reports through recent e-mails indicate that over the last couple of years, the situation has been regressing.

Middaugh stated in a recent e-mail: “Majeed wrote that she herself was frightened for the first time. And she’s a pretty brave woman,” said LeFrancois.

School officials and supporters have also brought members of the Sheik Misry community in on the school’s construction and it will be used by adults in the community after hours as a multi-purpose facility. Boys and girls are educated by Majeed, with girls being streamed elsewhere at puberty.

“The children go to school no matter how cold or hot it is; they want to be there so bad. They’re so appreciative of education. They have the same dreams as our children, and they take nothing for granted,” said LeFrancois.

On Oct. 14, Khan e-mailed CSAW representatives the following: “God bless you and all the people who are working on this wonderful project.

“Every day, when I am on the site at 11 a. m., there comes a wind storm and the tents are flopping and sand blowing in your face, then I say to myself this is the perfect site to build a school.

“Later on, when the sun moves over the horizon, the kids are exposed to the sun and they are cramped, sometimes 100 in a tent. Then again, I reaffirm our commitment.”

While the challenge of building a school, never mind doing so in a short space of time, is new to CSAW, LeFrancois said the importance of education can never be underestimated.

Many of the members of CSAW are retired teachers and believe that education is key to an improved future in Afghanistan.

“Education is the key to everything,” said Middaugh.

For tickets to Armstrong’s talk, call Daniela at (289) 242-4135.

To donate to CSAW’s school-building project, send cheques made payable to Rights and Democracy, noting on the memo line CSAW/Building, c/o CSAW at the SAVIS office, Hopedale Mall, 1515 Rebecca St., Suite 227, Oakville, ON L6L 5G8.

For more information on CSAW and the school building project, visit www.canadianssupportafghanwomen.ca .