You and I are both already aware of how involved Film Annex is in all things Afghanistan: helping veterans reassimilate as entrepreneurs, assisting Afghani women in finding their way into business, and bringing the Internet to school children. Personally, I find this last point most compelling. In the United States today, the Internet is ubiquitous. Heck, people have careers on it (ahem). It's jarring to think that there are millions of people that have never had it, and still don't.
Enter the Film Annex Afghan Development Project. Founded by Francesco Rulli (Film Annex) and Roy Mahoob (Citadel), it's first goal is to connect 160,000 Afghan school children to the Internet through 40 computer classrooms and 400 computers.
The main mission of the Film Annex Afghan Development project is to show the new face of Afghanistan through web video and education. To that end, the project has created it's own WebTV channel on Film Annex, appropriately named Afghan Web Development TV. There, you can see Afghan current event videos, interviews and news clips, as well as footage from the Afghan Youth Development archives. At the moment there are three videos available on the channel, all pertaining to the Baghnazargah School in Herat as they renovate part of the school in order to add a new computer classroom.
I have included one of the videos, Interviews at Baghnazargah, Herat, here. The other videos are visually beautiful, but this one gives you a chance to hear from teachers and students. During the interview with the principal. Parwin Motazibzadeh, she mentions how great it is that now, after the the fall of the Taliban, parents can finally send their children to school.
Her sentiment struck me in a way that none of the politcal chatter over the past ten+ years ever did. In the United States after 9/11, there was a lingering fear of another attack, but it seemed more and more remote as the years past. People in Afghanistan, however, lived with that influence and fear right outside their door, every single day. It's hard to grasp what that must have been like, and it's interesting to hear from someone who lived through it.
I highly recommend this video--it's short but powerful, and it leaves you with a feeling of hope as you watch the Film Annex Afghan Development Project continue it's mission to bring Afghanistan the Internet.
Interviews at Baghnazargah
For more information on the Film Annex Development Project, visit http://www.filmannexcorp.com/film-annex-in-afghanistan/.
To view other articles and videos recommended by Sarah Grace, visit http://www.filmannex.com/SarahGrace.
