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 RAF Reservist helps rebuild Afghan schools
www.mod.uk
Department of defence UK
2010-02-05
An RAF Reservist is spearheading a project to rebuild bomb-ravaged schools in villages where locals are living in the shadow of the Taliban. Report by Flying Officer Tony Newton.
Sergeant Vince Forde shares a desk with some of the local children in a recently refurbished Kandahar school
[Picture: Crown Copyright/MOD 2009]
Working as part of the RAF Regiment`s Non-Kinetic Effects Team, Kandahar-based Sergeant Vince Forde is helping build relationships between ISAF forces and the local population by ensuring Afghan youngsters in remote villages in Kandahar province can learn in safety.
The team has already helped rebuild one school and is currently working on another - as well as organising a number of other medical and community-based projects.
Sergeant Forde said:
"We`ve completed refurbishment of one school and started on another.
"Our completed school has two classrooms, an office/library and a caretaker`s house. We dug a well for fresh water, built latrines and installed heating stoves.
"We`ve built a protective boundary wall and sturdy gates, so children can play in security and confidence. And it`s a sign of changing times that boys and girls are being educated together there - and clearly enjoying their learning."
Funds for the project have come from a $37,500 ISAF grant to strengthen rural communities caught up in the conflict.
The schools building programme is just one element of the coalition drive to help normalise communities shattered by the Taliban insurgency.
Offering adult men in such communities, who could be targeted as Taliban recruits, an opportunity to better themselves by giving them paid work and a personal stake in the future of their villages is crucial to bringing peace and security to rural areas in Taliban heartlands.
Sergeant Forde said:
"Typically, we`ll hold a `shura` [consultation] with village elders to identify the projects that might be of benefit to them, then work with local contractors to make it happen.
"But in order to secure the contract, that contractor must be seen to employ an agreed number of local men who are of fighting age.
"We provide material aid while also generating paid, gainful employment to those who might otherwise have had nothing better to do than fight against us."
Key to the project`s success is using a `bottom-up` approach to what US Military Commander General Stanley McChrystal calls targeted material aid.
Sergeant Forde explained:
"The `top-down` approach has its place, but involving NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and others takes time and complicates both funding and delivery.
"What we do is get in and make an immediate difference as a springboard to help the local population help themselves."
Other projects underway include providing clean water supplies in areas where wells have been destroyed.
So far 165 wells in 23 villages have been repaired in the ten months that the project has been running.
Setting up community health projects is also improving life for the local population as Sergeant Forde explained:
"Villagers nominate people they wish to send on our 15-day first aid course and on completion of the course each participant receives a bicycle to help them carry out their duties.
"The project is obviously popular, with 80 community health workers trained to date."
This article is taken from the 20 January 2010 edition of RAF News - Voice of The Royal Air Force.
2010-02-05
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