"Our Vision Green Village Schools is a Portland, Oregon, based non-profit organization committed to building a generation of hope in Afghanistan. Our vision is to foster schools in Afghanistan that offer children a basic education and empower young people and their communities to become actively engaged in building a future of hope for their country. Green Village Schools also seeks to build thriving communities through support to school health services for students and local villages. We believe that investing in the education and health of young people in Afghanistan will ensure a future of hope for the country. Current Status In March 2001, Dr. Mohammad Khan Kharoti, a US-based physician of Afghan origin, began supporting classes for 10 boys and six girls in the Kharoti family compound in the village of Shin Kalay in Helmand Province of southern Afghanistan. The following year construction began on a school in the same village and in December 2002 Green Village Schools was officially recognized as a charity in the United States. In the ensuing years the educational complex eventually comprised eight classrooms for boys on one side of the school and eight for girls on the other, providing space for nine grades. A well was dug and an elevated storage tank, separate latrines for boys and girls and a privacy wall around the entire complex were constructed. In addition, the complex contained a library which also served as a community center and a computer lab was under construction. By 2007, with about 800 boys and 400 girls and a teaching staff of 35, the school was licensed by the Ministry of Education in Afghanistan and they provided some financial support for teachers' salaries. Other support came from a diverse range of community and international partners. The Provincial Office of the Minister of Education records that over 2,400 students have attended the school during its short history. In October 2008, the school in Shin Kalay that had

"INDEPTH: AFGHANISTAN Back to school in Afghanistan CBC News Online | January 27, 2004 The National | Airdate: May 6, 2002 Reporter: Carol Off | Producer: Heather Abbott | Editor: Catherine McIsaac When 1.5 million children went back in school in Afghanistan in the spring of 2002, a tough lesson was waiting for them. While the country welcomed some semblance of peace for the first time in years, war remained very much a part of its classrooms. Afghanistan's teachers tried to erase war images from the textbooks, images that got there in the first place due in large part to Cold War policies in the United States. Textbooks are full of guns, swords and other images of war At a public school in Kabul, students and teachers are anxious for some kind of normal routine. Some children bring their own chairs to school, if they have them. The school was almost destroyed by war. There's no electricity. It's colder inside than out. The cement floor is freezing. But the students don't mind. The young women and girls at this school are back in the classroom after five years of banishment by the Taliban. Women in their 20s have returned to Grade 11. But they're not bitter, they're happy. Getting children back to school is a number one priority in Afghanistan's post war government. But the big question is: what will they learn? A student learns to add and subtract bullets Math teachers use bullets as props to teach lessons in subtraction. This isn't their idea. During decades of war, the classroom has been the best place to indoctrinate young people with their duty to fight. Government-sponsored textbooks in Afghanistan are filled with violence. For years, war was the only lesson that counted. The Mujahideen, Afghanistan's freedom fighters, used the classroom to prepare children to fight the Soviet empire. The Russians are long gone but the textbooks are not. The Mujahideen had wanted to prepare the next generation of Afghans to fight the enemy, so pupils learned the prop