CEI’s education and capacity-building initiatives offer a lifeline in Afghanistan’s ongoing education crisis—providing flexible, gender-responsive, and community-based learning opportunities for out-of-school children, youth, and women in hard-to-reach and underserved areas.
Education and capacity-building programs like those delivered by CEI are critical in Afghanistan’s current context. Since 2021, the country has suffered a dramatic rollback in educational rights especially for women and girls. Over 3.7 million children are out of school, with girls constituting approximately 60% of that number. Secondary and higher education for females remains banned, effectively shutting out nearly 80% of adolescent girls and eliminating vital pathways for professionals like teachers and healthcare workers. This breakdown in education has far-reaching consequences, from eroding literacy gains made over the past two decades to magnifying child marriage, poverty, mental health issues, and societal inequality. In this fragile environment, CEI’s education and capacity-building initiatives offers a lifeline.
CEI is well-positioned to respond to education crisis through flexible, community-based approaches that are inclusive, culturally sensitive, and designed according to local needs. CEI aims to deliver a wide range of interventions aimed at ensuring continued learning and building community resilience:
- Community-Based Instruction: CEI provides basic education and literacy programs in community settings, especially in areas where formal schools are non-functional or inaccessible.
- Mobile Literacy Campaigns: These bring essential reading and writing skills to remote and underserved areas, reaching out-of-school children, adolescent girls, and young women.
- Vocational Training: CEI offers skills-based learning for youth and women, including safe-skills workshops for women to improve employability and support self-reliance.
- Digital Learning Platforms: The organization utilizes mobile and satellite technologies to deliver learning, particularly in areas with limited school infrastructure.
- Radio and Online Courses: These alternative education platforms extend access to learning in homes and communities, particularly where mobility is restricted.
- Community Learning Units and Mobile Classrooms: These allow CEI to reach both urban and rural learners with adaptable instruction formats.
- Gender-Responsive Programming: CEI promotes safe, inclusive, and culturally sensitive learning spaces. Programs are tailored to the specific needs of women and girls, while also training female educators and health workers where formal systems are inaccessible.
- Life Skills and Self-Reliance Training: Literacy and life-skills courses help individuals—particularly women and adolescent girls—gain confidence, decision-making abilities, and social agency.
