DATE=05/10/02

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=SURAYA SADEED, HEAD OF HELP THE AFGHAN CHILDREN, INCORPORATED

NUMBER=3-183

BYLINE=TOM CROSBY

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTERNET=

/// Editors: This interview is available in Dalet under SOD/English News Now Interviews in the folder for today or yesterday ///

INTRO: The United Nations summit on children continues in New York. Young summit delegates and world leaders have called for "universal education" for children. More than 400 children are taking part in the three-day conference. That includes a fifteen-year-old Ugandan schoolgirl named Caroline Barebwoha, who called for equal access to education for boys and girls.

And two Afghan orphans appealed to the world community to help the one-million orphaned children in Afghanistan, many of whom have no education, or had their educations interrupted. Someone with first-hand knowledge of the problems of getting educations for Afghan children is Suraya Sadeed (soo-'rye-uh sah-'deed), the head of the U-S-based charity, Help the Afghan Children, Incorporated. Before the Taleban was ousted, she slipped in and out of her native Afghanistan, helping to set up classrooms for girls out of sight of the Taleban. Now, she is working to build and rebuild schools. She spoke with News Now's Tom Crosby:

MS. SADEED: Afghanistan is one giant Ground Zero, so whatever we have to do, we have to build it from the ground, literally, and that is building schools also. And it is going to take some time for Afghanistan to go back on the recovery road.

MR. CROSBY: And for someone like yourself, that means you have to deal with contractors, educators?

MS. SADEED: You have to deal with educators, contractors. Even teachers who have been working there, most of them have been out of work, or out of the teaching area, for a while. So even the teachers have to get the proper training again and to be reintroduced to the work force and schools and what is the demand of today's education and all that. So, teachers also need training. And children, at this point, the biggest obstacle is of course the financial obstacle and to actually build these schools.

MR. CROSBY: How big a financial obstacle are you facing right now? Because I do understand some aid agencies are having trouble raising funds at this point.

MS. SADEED: As far as raising funds, I should not complain because, first of all, we are a small organization and, compared to other years, when Afghanistan was just a forgotten land, this year we are doing a little bit better. But, of course, it is never near enough to build at least the 14 schools that we want to build this year. That is our goal by the end of the year, but we are struggling for that. But I'm not going to give up on that. We are going to have to just keep trying to do that.

And there is no way around this problem. We're going to have to face it and we're going to have to solve it. We're going to have to give education to children. They need it like they need food and air and water.

MR. CROSBY: Of course, in Afghanistan, one of the particular problems that was faced there was girls were denied education. Very specifically, girls were denied education.

MS. SADEED: Yes, that is true.

MR. CROSBY: Does that leave some emotional scars on them that they might not have experienced otherwise?

MS. SADEED: Not only did it leave emotional scars on girls, but also families. And they have a lot of catching up to do. And for some girls who are actually past the schooling age, there should be some special courses for them, like speed courses and such, to get them to where they were supposed to be, but they couldn't. And everything, every infrastructure, as far as the education system in Afghanistan, has been destroyed. So, it has to be rebuilt, rebooted and rebuilt, from zero. And that takes a lot of time and money and effort.

But I tell you, it is the best investment that we can all make. And the rate of return for that investment is a world of peace.

MR. CROSBY: But is there any thought in your mind that there might be some holdovers from the old Taleban regime, the old Taleban attitude, that might stand in opposition to this?

MS. SADEED: There is a possibility of that. Of course, I personally don't have any reason at this point to believe it. But a lot of people are still psychologically not ready to go back to school. They are still scared. They are still afraid. And six or seven years of totalitarianism have really left a scar on a lot of people's minds. It is really hard for them to go back and assume that everything is back to normal. And while everything is not back to normal, not the way it should be, but we are probably going to get there. But it is a very slow pace.

MR. CROSBY: During the Taleban regime you managed to slip in and out of Afghanistan under cover. You set up some classrooms, didn't you?

MS. SADEED: Yes, 17 home-based schools for girls.

MR. CROSBY: And what happened to them?

MS. SADEED: Now, we are going to get rid of all those schools, because we will have regular schools definitely, and we are going to send these girls to the regular schools hopefully. That's why we are struggling to build our schools there to accommodate everybody, boys and girls, all of them. And if you want education to keep going on in Afghanistan, you also have to educate men there. Because they are the ones who actually did not let these girls go -- not all of them obviously, but the ones who were in power before. So education is vital for both men and women in Afghanistan, obviously.

HOST: Suraya Sadeed, the director of Help the Afghan Children, Incorporated.

/// OPT /// Participants at the U-N summit on children are expected to adopt an education plan of action for the next 15 years, before wrapping up their meeting Friday. However, at the outset of the summit, U-N Secretary General Kofi Annan chided world leaders for not doing more to protect the rights of children. /// END OPT ///

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