User:GJavetski

About Me

My name is Gillian Javetski and I am an intern at OLPC's Cambridge office this summer. I am a senior at Tufts University, where I am double majoring in international relations and community health. I took this past semester off to work at the United Nations Development Programme's HIV/AIDS unit in Geneva. At OLPC, I will be conducting research on UN and international partnerships.

Preliminary Research on UNICEF/other Partnerships in Afghanistan

About Education in Afghanistan

• UNICEF Country statistics, including Education
• Education in Afghanistan from Wikipedia
• OLPC in Afghanistan
• Notes from Matt's OLPC blog post about visiting Afghanistan:
  • Half (52%) of primary school aged children are enrolled in school. Still, 50% of Afghan girls and 40% of boys don't attend school.
  • In 2001, 800,000 children attended school compared to 7 million today.
  • Schools must operate in “shifts,” the average being three shifts per day meaning that each child generally received only 2.5 hours of school a day.
  • Teacher student ratios are often as high as 1:50-75
  • Afghan children receive only about half of OECD recommended average school times.
  • Close to 75% of teachers in Afghanistan are illiterate or have an education level of one year greater than the students they teach. **Building more schools, training teachers, providing materials would require 6 fold increase to education (over 1 billion a year) and would take 10-15 years.

What Programmatic Areas Is UNICEF Afghanistan Focusing On?

Child labor:

• In Afghanistan, 30% of all Afghan children are child laborers.
• To combat this, UNICEF is setting up drop-in centers for child laborers. In these places, classrooms are set up for students to learn. May be good to see what we can do with these drop-in centers since there are so many of them.

School attacks:

• In the last two years, school attacks on girl’s schools have more than doubled, forcing girls to leave school temporarily or permanently. This is also a problem (although to a lesser degree) for all-boy schools as well.
• Report by CARE/UNICEF on School Attacks
• While UNICEF is creating community-based schools to put more girls in the classroom, it is not clear whether they are helping girls continue their learning following such attacks. This is particularly interesting since they have a comprehensive “Classroom in a Box” concept for students following natural disasters, but not for attacks.
• Have also distributed many “Edukits” (or Schools in a Box for up to 80 students) and textbooks

Increasing female education access & literacy among (see UNICEF Priorities 1 and 3 below):

• UNICEF is promoting community-based schools and is teaching community management committees about the importance of girls’ education and their role in making it happen.

Promoting “child friendly curricula” (see UNICEF Priority 2 below):

• UNICEF is making strides in promoting “child friendly curricula” throughout schools in Afghanistan. This model, which has been implemented in more than 50 countries, utilizes curricula that are specifically inclusive and gender-sensitive.