Think Creative - Issue 5

Creative Life

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Shafiulhaq Rahimi Committed to education in conflict & peace Staff Spotlight

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Shafiulhaq Rahimi knows what it’s like to be a child when war breaks out. Growing up in Kabul in the 1990s, civil war disrupted his third-grade year, forcing Rahimi and his classmates out of school due to security concerns. They complet- ed the academic year inmakeshift classrooms. “Our brave teachers, they were committed to teaching,” he remembers. “They were not get- ting a salary for months but didn’t stop teaching children. We studied out in the open, and then we got tents froman aid organization.” Ultimately, he returned to a reconstructed school, built with humanitarian assistance funds that allowed him to finish his last three years of schooling. This era left amark on Rahimi, who would go on to devote his career to increasing educational opportunity for the children of his country. “These organizations were helping people in emergency and during war, so I was definitely thinking that I wished I could also help people. It changedmy dream,” he says. In 2004, Rahimi took a job with CARE Inter- national, supporting educational programming in different regions of Afghanistan. During his tenure with CARE until 2016, he worked in nearly a dozen of the country’s 34 provinces, traveling to remote communities when security permitted to reach vulnerable learners and strengthen schools. While working, he earned his bachelor’s andmaster’s degrees in business administration. Today, Rahimi serves as Deputy Chief of Party for the USAID-funded Afghan Children Read project, which works with Afghanistan’s Min- istry of Education to build and implement a sustainable, scalable and evidence-based national early grade reading program for grades 1 to 3. It is implemented by Creative with the International Rescue Commit- tee, Equal Access and SIL LEAD. Now in its third year, the project has reached more than 402,400 learners, working hand-in- hand with theMinistry to bring lasting change to the education sector, including through a new National Early Grade Reading policy.

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Motivated by his own experience as a child in

conflict, Shafiulhaq Rahimi has devoted his career to ensuring the children of Afghanistan have access to quality education regardless of their circumstances.

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“This work is changing the way of education service delivery of theMinistry of Education in early grades, equipping themwith necessary skills and capacity to lead such interventions in the country,” says Rahimi.  Juggling the day-to-day tasks of implementation in four major provinces, Rahimi is motivated by the small and big achievements—having a com- mitted team, daily progress of activities, seeing students learn and the successful completion of each implementation year. One of his proudest moments was when the project and theMinistry announced they were ready to print and distribute their newly devel- oped teacher and student materials in the pilot provinces. “It was amongmy everlastingmemories,” he says. “The teamwas able tomake what we were dreaming about. You will have teachers equipped with necessary skills using the new methodology and newway of teaching.” Working in an unstable environment like Afghanistan is, of course, not without its chal- lenges. Security is precarious. Explosions can

restrict movement and delay project activities. With a good understanding of the operational context, however, Rahimi says the implementa- tion of activities continues to move at a fast pace. Staff safety is one of Rahimi’s top priorities, and he knows that to keep staffmotivated hemust “bring everyone together” and provide support to the team. He adds that he gets that support fromhis chief of party, project director in the home office and other colleagues inWashington, DC and Afghanistan. But the job is an important one. Despite remark- able progress, there is still work to be done. School enrollment is up nearly nine-fold since 2001, according to the National Education Strat- egy, yet there are still nearly 3million out-of- school children in Afghanistan. Rahimi remains committed. “Despite all these challenges, despite all these threats that everyone is facing on a daily basis, there is a long way for us tomove forward and we should not stop.” n

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1: Creative Football club after a game in Washington, DC. (Submitted by Oswaldo Holguin) 2: Staff from the Community, Family and Youth Resilience program and Creative 3: Nelson Ariola and Belkis Vallecio, staff of the Proponte Más program. (Submitted by Robyn Braverman) 4: Director of Citizen Security Enrique Roig and Senior VP of Communities in Transition TomWheelock visit the Proponte Más program in Honduras. (Submitted by Enrique Roig) 5: Creative Writer and Editor Evelyn Rupert (right) and PROSASUR Nutrition Promoter HQ visit Kaieteur Falls in Guyana. (Submitted by Waqas Mahmood)

Karla Flores during a workshop for local mothers in El Paraíso, Honduras. (Submitted by Michael J. Zamba) 6: Creative’s Pakistan office celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8, 2019. (Submitted by Shakra Naheed Malik) 7: The Chinese New Year celebration at Creative’s HQ. From left: Charito Kruvant, Clara Montanez, Carola Mandelbaum, Rebecca Hartman. (Photo by Skip Brown) 8: CREA El Salvador staff pose with Leland Kruvant and Pablo Maldonado. (Submitted by Marta Maldonado) 9: Leland Kruvant with Sayed Abbas, Afghan Export Council President and owner of the Afghan Rug and Carpet Center, in Kabul. (Photo by Hedayatullah Amid)

Photo by JimHuylebroek

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