Afghan Girls to Benefit From NG-Sponsored Education Fund

George Stuteville
for National Geographic News

September 9, 2002

Since Sharbat Gula, the Afghan girl with the fierce green eyes, was
"rediscovered" earlier this year, her story has moved thousands of
people to contribute nearly half a million dollars to a fund
established to improve the lives of girls and young women in her
war-ravaged country.

The portrait of Sharbat staring from the cover of National Geographic in 1985 touched millions of people around the world and became a well-known icon.

The photographer who took the famous picture tracked her down after 17 years, and she appeared again on the cover of National Geographic last April. So many readers were eager to help Gula's family and others like them that the National Geographic Society joined with The Asia Foundation in creating the special fund.

By last week, about 5,600 donors had given $475,368 to the fund, including a $100,000 gift from the Society, said Mark Longo, director of development operations for the National Geographic Society.

The money, he noted, is already being used to establish the National Geographic Society Girls Education and Training Center in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The center will provide educational opportunities that were denied to Sharbat but which she said she wants desperately for her own three daughters, Longo explained. "It was Sharbat's desire and her wish that we use the funds specifically for this purpose. She knows about our efforts and is pleased," he said.

The daily life of women and children in Afghanistan has been disrupted by decades of turmoil stemming from a bloody invasion by the former Soviet Union, violent civil strife, and the crushing ideology of the Taliban.

"Forgotten Girls"

To establish and operate the center, the Society and The Asia Foundation are working with a Kabul-based organization known as the Afghan Street Working Children and New Approach (ASCHIANA).

Carol Yost, director of women's projects at the Washington, D.C., office of The Asia Foundation, said the Kabul group has found a building to lease and is creating a curriculum.

The center is targeted to destitute and illiterate street girls ages 12 through 17, many of whom are orphans or refugees who were separated from their families.

These children live a grim, hopeless existence in Kabul's dangerous streets, where they spend their days scavenging garbage or begging money, said Yost. Most of the girls don't actually sleep in the streets but in the homes of relatives or others, where they are expected to feed themselves and help the households.

"These are Afghanistan's forgotten girls," said Yost. "They had no access to an education during the Taliban's reign. They are traumatized by violence, desperately poor, and very vulnerable." Some of the girls are kidnapped and sold as sex slaves in Asia and India, she noted.

As an incentive for the girls to leave the streets and attend school for half a day, and to ease their burden of providing for themselves in the households where they stay, the new center will offer two meals a day, said Yost.

The ASCHIANA group has already established five schools. They were reserved exclusively for boys before the fall of the Taliban but are now co-educational.

The organizers hope the new center will initially be able to provide 270 girls with a sixth-grade education over a three-year period. The instruction will include vocational skills so the girls can eventually earn an income, Yost said. "Our goal is to make this a model program for Afghanistan," she said.

The Asia Foundation has set up similar centers throughout Southeast Asia and Indochina. In Bangladesh, for example, a school for girls that was established by the foundation eventually acquired World Bank funding and became the educational standard in that country.

"Our deepest goal is to expand our successes to Afghanistan, but we have special challenges there," Yost said.

Aid to Sharbat Gula

Although the Afghan girls education fund was established in honor of Sharbat Gula, Longo said that the famous photograph of her is not being used directly to promote the fund. "We won't exploit her or her family, but people remember the face—those eyes—and they respond," Longo said.

After Sharbat's picture appeared again on the cover of National Geographic last March and readers were updated on her life, schools, religious groups, and others donated to the fund. "Our largest single donation of $18,000 came from a Muslim women's group based in Canada," Longo said.

By Western standards, Sharbat's life is still one of toil and hardship, and she has suffered the death of one of her daughters. Yet she has chosen to live in obscurity among the Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan, with the Society providing for her and her family's needs in accordance with their wishes, Longo said.

"Beyond that, we simply cannot say any more for fear of compromising her safety," he said. "All we can say is that it is the privilege of the Society to look after Sharbat and her family according to what she wants."

Contributions can be made online to the National Geographic Afghan Girls Fund or by sending a check directly to the National Geographic Afghan Girls Fund, Development Office, National Geographic Society, 1145 17th Street N.W., Washington, D.C., 20036.