Afghanistan
Afghanistan’s education system went through a rejuvenation period after the fall of the Taliban, with the help of NGOs and local educators who wanted to preserve their culture, participating in the effort to bring science and art back to the classroom and to admit girls to school.
In 2002, Full-Circle Learning was asked by Meridian and San Francisco’s Zeum Museum California to help children around the world contribute to an environmental art exhibit. Children from multiple countries would create work to fill the exhibit space.
California students had already created handmade wisdom exchanges for Afghan students. On a Full-Circle Learning trip, a trainer helped the distant “brothers and sisters” exchange poetry and art on the theme, “What is the most precious thing to you about your environment, and what will you do to protect it?”
At one street school, many students attended only half days because their families depended on their work as“cowboys” tending the family cow or goat. They cherished the chance to come to school and learn at last.
When the students heard the question, each student busily drew their response through art. One small boy of nine drew his animal on the hillside with a missile falling toward it from a plane. The hill had been pocked with landmines for decades. Before the explosive could reach its target, the boy circled it and drew a line through it. When asked to explain his art, he stood and firmly spoke, saying, “We live in a beautiful country, with hillsides of snow and flowers and trees and animals, and yet war has threatened our environment since before our parents were born.We cannot protect our environment until we have peace. ​We​ must be the first generation of peacemakers.”
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