GCPH Seminar Series 8 - Lecture 2

Giving a voice to Afghan Civil Society 

The second seminar of Series 8 involved Lucia Berdondini and Sandra Grieve (University of Strathclyde), Abdulzahar Mohtasebzadeh, Ali Kaveh, Fereshta Abbasishahpasandzada and Ahmad Hamid Wahidy (University of Herat, Afghanistan) and Marco Braghero and Masood Khalil (PeaceWaves International Network, Italy).

Since 2010 the University of Strathclyde, the University of Herat and the NGO PeaceWaves International Network have been collaborating in two projects funded by the British Council.

The first, under the scheme called DelPHE and started in September 2010, is a three year collaborative research project titled Afghan Civil Society's opinion and suggestions regarding women's empowerment and children's education in their country. 

15 young Afghan researchers have been trained on quantitative and qualitative research methods. Parallel to that, a questionnaire and some focus groups have been developed and are due to be run by the young researchers across the six Afghan provinces. The aim of this project is to give a voice to Afghan Civil Society regarding two main emergencies in their country (that are also points raised by the Millennium Development Goals, 2009): women's empowerment and children's education. 

The second collaborative project is under the scheme called INSPIRE International Strategic Partnership and started in January 2011. The focus of this project is to run (across three years) two training courses for Afghan practitioners in Person Centred/Experiential Skills plus a final advanced input. The course is experientially co-constructed between tutors and participants on a daily basis, in respect of the local cultural and traditional values and has the long term aim to be training for trainers that can be applied and replicated autonomously at the University of Herat and several other Afghan organisations. 

In these films, the members of the teams present an overview of their work, together with findings so far and the implications of these for a country living with the consequences of a long period of war and devastation.