A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Ginny Barahona and Afghan Women’s Network (AWN): Education Project

Ginny is a graduate student at Georgetown University. Prior to her internship, she worked with the North Philadelphia Public School System under the federally funded GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) program, where she organized tutoring programs for four middle schools. Through her participation in this program, Ginny developed an interest in community building through institutions and the relationship between access to services and progress. 

As part of The Advocacy Project's 2004 Summer Internship Program, Ginny Barahona interned with the Afghan Women's Network (AWN), one of the foremost groups lobbying for the rights of Afghan women.


Girls at an AWN school in Wardak province, Afghanistan.

Ginny was one of two students who worked with AWN, and focused her internship on AWN's ambitious project to build three girls' schools in isolated provinces of Afghanistan. Ginny helped them to develop this project and sent back regular reports on its progress.  

These reports were shared with the donor who funded the project, and were also disseminated through AP's news service to a network of individuals and groups that are supporting girls' education in Afghanistan. They provided a document of the steps being taken to improve the lives of the future women of that country. 

During the summer, Ginny posted reports in the form of blogs. These blogs offered a unique view into the day-to-day operations of a grassroots organization, and into Ginny's own personal experience as an intern. 

The AWN was started in 1998 by Afghan women refugees to lobby for greater protection for other Afghan refugee women and children who had fled to Pakistan. Following the collapse of the Taliban, AWN moved part of its operation to Kabul, Afghanistan. Today, it operates on both sides of the border, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where it lobbies for women's rights. AWN has grown into a formidable lobbying network, with 65 member organizations and 3,000 individual members. 

Two years ago, AWN established a girls' school in Godah, Wardak Province, where eighty girls are currently enrolled. Building upon this success, the AWN have opened girls' schools in two other provinces where there have been no educational opportunities available for girls for many years and where no other NGOs are currently working. 

All three schools educate girls in the villages, but they also send their advanced students (in their third year) to the homes of older women who are reluctant to come to schools themselves. The schools also provides training for teachers. All this is being done in conjunction with the local government, and with local members of the AWN. 

The funding for this project came from a private family foundation that read about the AWN work on AP's website, and offered them $39,000 for a three-year education project. 

• Ginny Barahona's blog