Isobel Coleman’s Book Spotlights Future Generations Afghanistan

Posted on Thu, 2010 – 07 – 22 13:43

In her book, Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East, Isobel Coleman finds herself in a rural part of Afghanistan. Her traveling companion is Dr. Shukria Hassan, the former health director of Future Generations Afghanistan. In the book's introduction, Coleman highlights the work of Future Generations to provide literacy classes for women and girls through the help of local religious leaders.

An estimated 79% of Afghan women and girls cannot read and write. In early 2002, at a community meeting organized by Future Generations in Ghazni Province, the local leaders chose literacy for women as one of their initial work plan projects. Rather than waiting on government assistance to build a school and provide a teacher, Future Generations helped the community identify its available resources: the mosque as a classroom and one woman in the village who had obtained up to an eighth grade education. In three-years, this idea spread to include 400 mosque-based schools teaching approximately 11,000 women and girls.

Using only international aid to develop a school for girls would not benefit the community in a sustainable way. Previous attempts at such a task were fraught with failure because those projects worked against the dominant culture of the area. Future Generations bases its projects on working from within a culture to help the communities become self-reliant. The support of local leaders, both political and religious, is necessary in order to gain the interest, trust, and acceptance of the community.

Coleman sums up the mission for the project in Afghanistan by saying that international organizations “… would have to find ways to work with the pervasive and powerful force of Islam, not against it.” Lasting change comes from a desire within the community and the culture.

Isobel Coleman is a Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where she focuses on the Middle East and South Asia. She is also the director of the Council’s Women and Foreign Policy Program.