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4- The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday November 5, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Come to Church twice this weekend! Hear the world-renowned Canadian Orpheus Male Choir Friday at 8:00 ( cket info at knoxoakville.com) Then enjoy worship service on Sunday at 9:00 or 10:30 a.m. Trying to change the future By Angela Blackburn OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Lakeshore & Dunn 905.844.3472 KnoxOakville.com planning a florida vacation MANY vacation homes to choose in all areas of Florida. Choose from Condos, Villas, Pool homes and from 3 to 8 Bedroom homes Book Now! rates as low as $ 85 /night Deal directly with the owners myholidayhomerental.com It's dangerous to build a school in Afghanistan where girls are allowed to be educated, but you've got to try, says a group of Halton women. After all, there are children in that war-torn country who are so desperate for education that they attend school in a tent, set in a desert, in three shifts per day, braving wind, sand storms and cold weather -- not to mention possible repercussion from the Taliban. Since the late 1990s, Canadians in Support of Afghan Women (CSAW), which is affiliated with Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, has fundraised $450,000 to pay teachers's salaries and provide school supplies -- including the tents. Though the uncertain economy has CSAW, like all charities, facing an uphill climb to keep doing what is has been doing -- it nevertheless quickly jumped at participating in a brand new project -- turning the tent schools into a 10-room building of bricks and mortar. It's a job that's to be done in short order, too. A Calgary engineer, Ashsaque Khan, and his family have donated $40,000 of the required $70,000 U.S. for the job and construction began in late September -- with the Canadian engineer overseeing the process. It must be complete before December when winter winds will blow and Khan's work permit will expire. So CSAW is cranking up its fundraising power and calling on Halton residents to once again remember the children of Afghanistan in an effort to come up with the remaining $30,000. The project has been dubbed Dare to Dream, Brick by Brick. "CSAW is making this urgent request to our families, friends, colleagues and members of the community to donate immediately to this worthy project, which we hope will be completed within three months. Please be assured that 100 per cent of your donations will go directly to the project. Our work on behalf of Afghan students is completely on a volunteer basis," states its website. Donations (with tax receipts for donations of $20 or more) will be accepted and on Nov. 23, as author Sally Armstrong's new book, Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots, is launched, Armstrong will speak on the Uncertain Fate of Afghanistan's Women with proceeds going to the school-building project. Armstrong's talk will run from 24 p.m. at St. John's United Church, 262 Randall St. and the $25 admission will help toward the building of the school in Afghanistan. The school to replace the tents would be the only school available NIKKI WESLEY / OAKVILLE BEAVER THINKING OF THE FUTURE: From left, Liz Watson , Linda Middaugh, Bev LeFrancois, Ruth Sheridan and Barbara Wood are members of Canadians in Support of Afghan Women (CSAW), a volunteer group committed to raising awareness and money to assist the women and children of Afghanistan in their struggle for human rights by helping them build a school in which girls will be educated. Here the local women are pictured with a collage outlining the progress of the school to date. to the 500 students who are desperately seeking an education by currently attending the tent schools. CSAW was actually born when a group of local women responded to Armstrong's 1997 article in Homemakers magazine, Veiled Threat. Through CWWA, it adopted a school in Afghanistan and eventually came to know educator Nazaneen Majeed. Since the 1980s, Majeed has been providing education to young people in Afghanistan. She spearheaded construction of a school in Jalalabad in the mid 1990s, but abandoned it to the Taliban, which took it over for its own use in 1996. She fled to Pakistan. Majeed returned in the spring of 2002 and found the school in relatively good shape and began holding classes again. Then two junior schools were established in tents in nearby villages. Flash flooding saw the schools relocated to Sheik Misry, about 30 km outside of Jalalabad in the spring of 2007. Jalalabad is a city in eastern Afghanistan approximately 140 km from Kabul to the west and Peshawar in Pakistan to the east. Jalalabad is the largest city of east Afghanistan, a social and business centre that is being rebuilt under NATO and UN direction after decades of war. It has been receiving an influx of refugees returning largely from Pakistan. Majeed, as principal of the tent schools and that in Jalalabad, has been going back and forth from Jalalabad to Peshawar. "She had to run and hide in a field at one point," said Bev LeFrancois, one of the founders of CSAW, which is an offshoot of and even shares office space with Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Services (SAVIS). Linda Middaugh of Milton, another CSAW member who actually met Majeed, explained the school principal fled into the fields when the Taliban had come into an area where Majeed was renting a house, on a street where many NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) had homes. She fled into a field with two American women when the Taliban descended and burned all homes that bore the sign of an NGO. Majeed had not labelled her home and so it survived. A helicopter arrived to pick up the American women and after several days, Majeed returned to her home to collect a few belongings and again made her way to the safety of Pakistan, returning when the situation had calmed. Her status in being a Muslim, from the area, with a husband whose family is also from the area, and being a person who does not draw attention to her work, apparently enables Majeed to fly under the radar of those who may interfere to the detriment of her students on a political level. However WHAM members say reports through recent e-mails indicate that over the last couple of years, the situation has been regressing. Middaugh said in a recent e-mail, "Majeed wrote that she was frightened herself for the first time." "And she's a pretty brave woman," said LeFrancois. School officials and supporters have also brought members of the Sheik Misry community in on the school's construction and it will be used by adults in the community See Students page 5