Baba Zangee High School
Completed
Baba Zangee High School is located in the center of Herat, just a few kilometers from the Blue Mosque – one of the city’s landmarks. Around 6,000 pupils attend the school, which is taught in tents without its own school building. The extreme weather conditions and the poor condition of the tents make teaching impossible at times. To improve the situation at the school, we cooperated with the Heidberg-Gymnasium in Hamburg-Langenhorn. This enabled sufficient donations to be generated for new tents.
INITIAL SITUATION
The city of Herat is located in western Afghanistan, just a few hours’ drive from the Iranian border. It is the capital of the province of the same name, Herat, and the second largest city in Afghanistan with around 600,000 inhabitants (as of 2020). The city is known worldwide for its Blue Mosque, among other things.
The security situation in Herat is – considering the situation in Afghanistan as a whole – comparatively stable. However, districts in the immediate vicinity of the city are being fought over. Baba Zangee High School is located in the city center of Herat, just a few kilometers from the Blue Mosque. The project was brought into the project portfolio by our member Wagma, whose aunt works as a teacher at the school. The school is attended by around 6,000 pupils, who are taught in gender-segregated shifts in the mornings and afternoons. School lessons take place exclusively in tents. An actual school building never existed; only the administration is housed in a small building.
Due to the extreme weather conditions and poor quality, the school’s stock of tents had deteriorated to the point of being unusable, meaning that some lessons had to take place outdoors. In some cases, lessons were not possible for individual school classes due to the heat, cold and precipitation. As a result, the school approached us with a requirement for 36 new tents and carpeting.
PROBLEM AND SOLUTION
To verify our requirements, we first had them sent to us, including a cost breakdown. In the next step, the school was visited by a trusted person on site to confirm the list of requirements on the basis of an inspection. This step was repeated a second time with the involvement of another independent person of trust. The list of requirements was then adjusted and a cost plan drawn up. The donations were to be generated exclusively in cooperation with a partner school, the Heidberg-Gymnasium in Hamburg-Langenhorn. The pupils, teachers and parents had organized fundraising runs, a social day and a charity evening independently in advance, so that a total donation of €7,385.97 was raised. The money was used to purchase 25 tents on site, pay for the welding work on the tent frames and buy carpeting. The purchase and the work were properly supervised and documented on the basis of invoices and photographs. The tents are of a particularly high quality and come with a five-year guarantee, so that teaching at the school is guaranteed for years to come. There is currently no further structural need.
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