Angelina Jolie's School for Girls Opens in Eastern Afghanistan

Since being appointed a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Ambassador in 2001, Angelina Jolie has worked tirelessly to aid refugees in countries like Kenya, Sierra Leone and Cambodia. Last September, Jolie visited Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp on the Kenya-Somali border, and met with families who had been living in the camp for many years. One month later, Jolie visited the refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. She was so moved by the stories of the women she met in the camp that she donated $200,000 to UNCHR's work in Kenya and earmarked $50,000 of that money to fund a school for displaced girls at the camp.

Now, the Goodwill Ambassador has helped open another school; this time in eastern Afghanistan. According to UNCHR's website: "There were celebrations in Tangi last week when a new primary school for girls was opened barely 18 months after Angelina Jolie visited the settlement for refugee returnees and expressed concern about the lack of basic education facilities for children."

After her visit, Jolie donated $75,000 to build a school in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, and last Thursday, the new school was inaugurated. UNCHR reports that it has eight classrooms, four administration buildings, a well and eight latrines, and 800 girls will be able to attend school on the premises in two shirts.

The school represents a long-awaited change in the region where many parents are hesitant to send their daughters to the same schools where boys are educated for cultural reasons. Children in the region had been attending lessons at an existing school that could hold 1,300 students in two shifts: boys in the morning and girls in the afternoon. Many girls had stopped attending school altogether, however, due to pressing cultural restraints.

Hakima, a 14-year-old Tangi resident, spoke about her decision to quit school: "The school we are presently studying in does not have enough classrooms ... six of our classes are studying in tents. Because of the cultural constraints and security concerns, I had decided not to continue."

Thanks to Angelina Jolie's magnanimity, the female students of Tangi now have a primary school building devoted entirely to their education, which they hope will one day also function as a high school. Iqbal Azizi, the head of the provincial education department, spoke about the significance of the new school: "otherwise [many girls in Tangi] would have been deprived of education in the absence of a primary school building." Now females in Tangi will no longer feel that their education is less important than that of their male counterparts.

Photo by Stefan Servos via Wikimedia Commons.