Mark Manley

NGO and NonProfit: The Roqia Center: - Roqia Center Adult Literacy Project

The Roqia Center for Women's Rights, Studies and Education in Afghanistan was started by Nasrine Gross. A small woman with a round face, she enters a room seeking engagement. She is direct and extroverted, filling up a space once she enters it. Afghan-born, U.S. citizen and no-nonsense advocate of Afghan democratization and reconstruction, Nasrine felt the international community had overlooked the importance of adult literacy to the future of Afghanistan, choosing to focus on child literacy instead. "It's these adults who will make all the decisions about Afghanistan in the next 20 years, who to vote for, where to buy a house, what kind of trade, who to marry their children off to, where to seek health care, where to put their money," she states.

There are a lot of literacy programs in Afghanistan targeting children, but the Roqia Center is focusing on adult literacy, an area they believe is particularly underserved. Currently, Afghan literacy rates are estimated at 28%.
   
  
Nasrine is also an unflinching women’s-rights activist. She believes completely that Afghanistans' march toward reconstruction and democratization is absolutely intertwined with addressing gender inequality and equal rights for Afghan women and men.The Roqia Center then created a unique literacy program to address adult literacy while simultaneously addressing gender inequality through the creation of "couples only" classes.
     
  
These "couples only" classes have had significant successes, some of which have been chronicled in the documentary, "Love Letters from Kabul." However, on this day, in this class, the idea of men and women studying together in the same classroom as equals still seemed more aspirational than reality. There were ten couples enrolled in the class. On this day seven of the women showed up, but only one of the husbands eventually arrived. Initially he sat alone on the opposite side of the small room, apart from the rest of his female classmates.
   
The lone husband who arrived at this Roqia "couples only" class sat separately, across the small cramped room from the women students in the class. Eventually, his wife was encouraged to move from the side of the room where she had been sitting with the other women, to sit with him . She did, but they both looked uncomfortable.
   
     
  
The Education Division of the Roqia Center houses an innovative literacy program. Feeling that adult literacy was being neglected, the Center began focusing on adult classes, including adult "couples only" classes, teaching basic reading, writing and arithmetic, comparable to an Afghan public school third grade level.
  
  
     
  
   
  
Literacy rates for Afghanistan nationwide are estimated at around 28%. For women that figure drops to 13%. Both figures are even lower for Afghans living outside the cities in rural areas, where approximately 90% of Afghans live.
     
  
"Every aid donor is asking the government of Afghanistan to improve governance. Have you ever thought how they can improve governance if 80 percent of the population is illiterate? Illiterate people cannot read words, let alone read an income tax return. Governance is imperiled by this high illiteracy rate," Nasrine Gross, Founder Roqia Center for Women's Rights, Studies and Education.