Speeches Shim
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The USAID funded Afghan Children Read (ACR) project establishes reading labs to introduce supplementary reading materials to students and improve their reading skills. Since 2018, the ACR team established reading labs in Herat schools and trained teachers and school administrators to manage the labs.
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In Afghanistan, many jobs are not considered traditionally or culturally appropriate for women. Families are often reluctant to allow their female members to work in male-dominated workplaces. For example, less than 26 percent of the civil service in Afghanistan are women. However, many women in Afghanistan are overcoming these cultural restrictions to pursue their careers in this male-dominated country.
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Finding a job was Sonita’s* main objective when she graduated from an Afghan university in 2015, but with no work experience to show on her résumé, her search seemed futile.
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Mr. Rahmatullah is a 40-year-old farmer from Wazir village of Zheray district, Kandahar. Every year, Rahmatullah and his brother Abdul Manan, cultivate poppy on their two hectares of land to support their fifteen member family. “From years, we cultivate poppies on this land to feed our children. Other licit crops do not produce sustainable income to rely on,” says Rahmatullah.
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Afghanistan’s agricultural sector produces fresh and dried fruits and nuts of the highest quality and pomegranates that are widely considered some of the best in the world. Marketing and shipping Afghanistan’s agricultural bounty abroad, however, remains a huge challenge for many Afghan farmers and traders.
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