If you are following the progress of Film Annex's Afghan Development Project, you're in for some good news. Recently, Daniel Yomtobian, CEO and founder of Advertise.com, committed to a collaboration with Film Annex to promote the project and support the Afghanistan education system. Yomtobian's contribution, along with contributions of other CEOS (like Bhaskar Ballapragada, president of AdonNetwork), marks the initial steps of a new Film Annex initiative: the Afghan Incubator and Technology Grid.

Sounds pretty fancy, right? It's also pretty cool. The mission of the new initiative is to implement, develop and test social media, educational and gaming software for teens and pre-teens in the Afghan education system. This program will take place in 40 schools and affect 160,000 Afghani children. What's more, each application or software program developed will become its own project, financed by Film Annex Capital partners. It's a unique combination of commerce and philanthropy, and it allows Afghani children to learn the digital technologies that will help grow their economy in the coming years.

 Projects like the Afghan Development Fund are on a exponential growth path. In the city of Herat, 16,000 children have already been connected to the Internet via the Afghan Development Fund, and construction will soon begin on the Hatifi School classroom, connecting another 8300 children and building an Internet classroom twice as big as the largest classroom the project has created thus far.

But they aren't stopping there. With the support of companies like Advertise.com and AdonNetwork, this project will continue grow, hopefully one day reaching every school in Afghanistan (1000 in al) and providing the Internet to each of the 4 million children in the country.

It's no secret that corporations will most likely profit from their contributions to the Afghan Development Project.  But I don't see that as a bad thing. Instead, I see a rare opportunity for companies to be profitable and truly philanthropic at the same time. By providing digital resources needed by Afghanistan's schools, contributing companies open themselves up to new opportunities. In Afghanistan's burgeoning economy, we can only speculate about the opportunities that will arise in the years to come, but my guess is there will be many. Companies that contribute to the Afghan Development Project, or any of Film Annex's other philanthropic efforts in Afghanistan, will find themselves in a good place to get involved with those opportunities.

And that is certainly good business.

To view other articles and videos recommended by Sarah Grace, visit http://www.filmannex.com/SarahGrace.