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Many Woodinville Rotarians
will recall club efforts to collect thousands of textbooks
back in 2002 to send to Afghanistan in the wake of the fall
of the Taliban in that country. On Friday, January 9, Seattle
Times columnist Lance Dickie of Kenmore wrote a column
titled "Lending a hand in Afghanistan." We reprint
the portion that recalls how Woodinville Rotarians worked
with educator-Rotarian Suzanne Griffin to collect and ship
11,000 textbooks by ocean freight to that beleaguered
country where the Taliban had essentially banned or
destroyed all reference materials from the West. Lance
writes:
Seattle
educator Suzanne Griffin has worked throughout
Afghanistan since 2002 to build an educational
infrastructure and promote literacy among women. I caught up
with her after a morning reunion with her Emerald City
Rotary in downtown Seattle. Years later, she is still
grateful to Seattle Times readers who donated money to ship
10,000 textbooks collected by Woodinville High School
students and (Woodinville) Rotary members.
She
was returning to Afghanistan with a new job as manager of
Washington State University's Afghan eQuality Alliance, to
boost university enrollment to 100,000 by 2010, with at
least 35 percent female students. The tools include
promotion of scholarships, computer literacy, computer labs,
online courses and digital libraries.
Griffin
has spent years helping train Afghan teachers, school
principals and provincial education directors. Success, she
emphasizes, is in local ownership of programs. Make
resources available and help local officials distribute them
and garner credit. Hire locally. Promote locally. The
lessons are rooted in her Peace Corps experience. Do not do
things for people, but with them.
A
year ago next Wednesday, Griffin survived an attack by
suicide bombers that killed seven people. She was in a hotel
gym, the target of the assault. Knowing it was too dangerous
to walk alone outdoors, she had started a therapy routine
for a hip replacement. She huddled in the locker room as
bullets spattered the plaster over her head.
(Newsletter
Ed.'s Note -- Here's an example how Woodinville
Rotarians -- working with a very dedicated, gutsy woman --
can help make a difference in a troubled world. The project
to collect new and used textbooks involved just about every
club member and engaged many others in our communities in
the work of Rotary. See what one club can do!).
Suzanne presents textbook to
Afghan leader in Kabul - 2003
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