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GARMSIR DISTRICT, Afghanistan - Pencils, paper and backpacks are piled high in the corner of a school office. Down the hall, local children eagerly wait on the edges of their seats. The District Governor, District Chief of Police and local Kandak Commander, aided by elders and local farmers, grab fistfuls of pencils, stuff the backpacks full and walk to the entryway of the classrooms.
Excited shouts erupt from inside. Children lean over the front of their desks, as if to say ‘me first, me first,’ and the district leaders begin to pass out the school supplies.
Minutes earlier everyone was outside, watching a pair of scissors slice through a decorative ribbon.
Three months before that, the children were sitting cross-legged on the ground in dusty, hole-ridden tents with notebooks in their laps.
“We are so happy that a school was built,” said Mamor Zarifshah, a native of Garmsir. “It will help our children become doctors, teachers or engineers.”
The ribbon was cut Sept. 13 after more than six months of planning and construction for the permanent school building. It replaced three tent schools in the Laki area of Garmsir and is part of a focus the Afghan government and 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment have of supporting betterment of the education system in the district.
Families and friends of the Marines and sailors in 1/3 joined the effort, sending care packages full of school supplies for Garmsir children.
The Laki School is proposed to house 100 students. Sgt. Ryan Smith thinks that more will come as the school year moves forward.
“I feel that as the school year progresses, more students will attend,” said Smith, a civil affairs non-commissioned officer with Weapons Company. “It’s hard to gauge the amount of students that will come just off the opening day.”
“More schools mean more opportunity to learn, which will help for a better transition of Afghanistan,” added Smith. “[The children will change] from bored youth to educated and engaged students learning more than just the norm of an agricultural life. [The school] opens more opportunities for the younger Afghans of Garmsir.”
The Laki School is intended to be a local high school for the area. Children up to the age of 18 will attend, studying subjects like math, Pashtu, Dari, biology, religion, reading and writing.
“The school is important because it’s one of the first the government of Afghanistan has built in this area,” said Capt. Andrew Gourgoumim, Weapons Company commander and native of Boston, Mass. “It replaced a tent school and represents the credibility and commitment that government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has in this area.”
Along with the Laki School, more than 10 other schools are under construction. Second Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment started the process of building permanent structures, constructing five schools during their deployment last year. Upon arriving in Garmsir, 1/3 “kept the ball rolling” by planning the construction of schools in the major populated areas of the district. Construction is scheduled to be completed on all the schools by the end of this school year. The cumulative efforts of 2/1 and 1/3 will ensure almost half the schools in Garmsir are permanent structures.
“It gives me great satisfaction knowing there was once a low education level and an infrastructure that was slowly spreading throughout southern Garmsir, to now improved higher levels of education and wide spread acceptance of infrastructure” said Smith. “From tents to actual concrete buildings.”
Each school is estimated to be the around the same size as the Laki School. When construction is finished more than 2,000 children will be able to go to school in a permanent building vice a tent.
“When you say Garmsir, you’re talking about a very large place with a spread out population,” said 1st Lt. Paul Mooney, assistant team leader of Garmsir’s Civil Affairs team. “Because of this, there previously hasn’t been much focus on schools because the area is so big. So it is satisfying to start the process of bringing better education to Garmsir.”
In accordance with Islamic tradition, boys are segregated from girls during school. Of the 13 schools planned by 1/3, three of the schools will specifically be for Afghan girls.
The Afghan Ministry of Education monitors each school, and Garmsir teachers recently finished an instructor’s course to kick off the new school year.
“Everything, every project we do, kind of ties together,” added Mooney. “Better roads means you can get to the school easier, more bridges means you can get to the roads quicker, everything falls into place. But the construction of schools has been our main focus.”
The focus on education in Garmsir is an effect of coalition forces’ main mission in Afghanistan, partnering with the Afghan National Security Forces to provide a secure atmosphere in which the Afghan government can continue to develop a sound infrastructure for the district.
| Date Taken: | 09.13.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 09.18.2011 13:27 |
| Story ID: | 77217 |
| Location: | GARMSIR DISTRICT, AF |
| Web Views: | 439 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Afghan government, coalition forces build for a better education, by Cpl Colby Brown, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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