By Sayed Naweed Raee, Local Monitor
Baba Haji School in Herat province hosts nearly 3,000 male and female students, but while it has a sizeable land area, it had quite inadequate facilities. Among other problems, the school had only 15 classrooms, no proper playground, and had not been renovated for a considerable period of time.
Haji Khuda Bakhsh, a volunteer local community monitor mobilized the communities around the school and organized a meeting with the school’s administration. During this community mobilization, the local members of the community showed a lot of interest to contribute to the improvement of the school.
With the urging of the local community a number of improvements were implemented. The school’s main yard of over 600 square meters was cleaned up and flowers were planted, the backyard was leveled and prepared for students to play various sports, drawings were placed on the walls, the school’s electricity was reconnected, the school’s surrounding walls were repainted, and a microphone and amplifier were purchased to be used by students for their events. These improvements were possible only because of the community’s interest and their cooperation and support to the school administration.
Encouraged by the community’s drive to improve their school by themselves, Adina – a private charity foundation – also took an interest in the school and undertook to build six additional classrooms for the students. The construction work on these additional classrooms has already begun.
The school environment is now quite satisfying for both students and teachers. It has also made the local community aware of the important role they can play in the monitoring of their own communities. Students’ parents now regularly visit the school and take up any problems they observe with the school’s administration. Because local communities have been directly involved in reconstruction and improvements in schools like Haji Baba, a sense of ownership and of the importance of monitoring of schools by the people has been created in the area.
There are many more communities who are interested to monitor their schools. Integrity Watch currently runs the Community-Based Monitoring of Schools in 3 provinces and covers 150 schools. In 2017, the program will expand to 9 provinces and will cover more than 270 schools.
