We would be hard pushed to find
than Afghanistan and the Czech Republic. When we look at the problems each of these countries face, however, the missing link becomes apparent.
As part of the Madan project, we have been able to create a whole network of “sister schools”. In each case the form of cooperation involved linking up one Czech school with another Afghan school. The point of this was to set up a kind of open partnership, whose form would develop according to the work put in by the participating schools. Cooperation between sister schools was supposed to ensure mutual understanding and communication between children from two diverse cultures as well as to provide long-lasting, systematic, albeit minor, support to Afghan schools.
The objective of this collaboration was to turn the makeshift Afghan schools into more pleasant places to be. Thanks to the collections made by the sister school in the Czech Republic, pupils there received exercise books, reading books as well study aids for painting and sport. In the Afghan environment these are true treasures. An important role in all of this was clearly about creating the actual awareness that someone does care if children in Chohi and Langarkhana go to school and what kind of conditions they study in.
Cooperation between the sister schools in the Czech Republic and Afghanistan had to be halted in the middle of 2007. The reason for this was increased administrative and logistical demands. There were growing problems with transport, customs as well as other procedures which emerged on the side of the Afghans. Likewise the interest in continuing with such cooperation fell on the side of both the Czechs as well as the Afghans, provoked by a change to schools cooperating with us in the Balkh province.
