A school in Afghanistan continues to educate girls despite violent threats, reports the Washington Post. Started by two brothers in Spina, the school provides local girls with an education that they cannot receive from the US-funded school that is only for boys.
The school opened in 2007 after the US-funded girls’ school was destroyed. The two brothers and a few other literate men began educating small groups of girls between the ages of 5 and 12 in the brothers’ home. Today, the school has grown with morning classes for the younger students and afternoon classes for teenage girls. The school has been denied local funding and the brothers often receive threats of violence from Taliban insurgents. The school remains open though, and one of the brothers says “the girls just kept coming. They were so eager, like they were starving.”
School enrollment in Afghanistan has increased from 5,000 girls under Taliban rule to 2.5 million girls. Still, 2 million Afghan girls are denied an education. Violence against girls’ schools also continues. Last week, approximately 150 Afghan girls drank poisoned water at a school in the northern Takhar province. Afghan officials said that conservative radicals who oppose girls’ education are to blame for the poisoning, though they would not name a specific group.
