Mobile phones turn schools for women in Afghanistan
16 Nov 2012 5:20 AM IST
Afghanistan has launched a new literacy programme that enables Afghan women deprived of a basic education during decades of war to learn to read and write using a mobile phone.
The phone is called Ustad Mobile (Mobile Teacher) and provides national curriculum courses in both national languages, Dari and Pashto, as well as mathematics.
All the lessons are audio-video, with writing, pronunciation and phrases installed in Ustad Mobile phones - and they are distributed free to students. Sat on a carpet in a small Kabul classroom with a handful of women learning to read and write, 18-year-old Muzhgan Nazari said the Taliban, who banned schooling for girls during their rule, were in power when she should have started her education.
‘I could not go to school because the Taliban took control of Kabul city’, she told AFP, adding that her father had also opposed his daughters attending school.
‘Since I heard about this literacy training centre for women, I convinced my father and he allowed me to attend on a daily basis,’ she said.
The phone is called Ustad Mobile (Mobile Teacher) and provides national curriculum courses in both national languages, Dari and Pashto, as well as mathematics.
All the lessons are audio-video, with writing, pronunciation and phrases installed in Ustad Mobile phones - and they are distributed free to students. Sat on a carpet in a small Kabul classroom with a handful of women learning to read and write, 18-year-old Muzhgan Nazari said the Taliban, who banned schooling for girls during their rule, were in power when she should have started her education.
‘I could not go to school because the Taliban took control of Kabul city’, she told AFP, adding that her father had also opposed his daughters attending school.
‘Since I heard about this literacy training centre for women, I convinced my father and he allowed me to attend on a daily basis,’ she said.
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