BRIDGE in Afghanistan in 2008

In these sessions representatives from other relevant organizations those are dealing with administrative boundaries (Census, Geodesy & Cartography, and Local Organizations) within our country and Kabul Provincial Council Members were participated.

These modules translated in Pashto and Dari languages before starting the course, while theses modules were translating the BRIDGE 2 version didn’t finalized so we used the old versions.

The first session was conducted from 2-6 Feb 2008 in IEC headquarter, 24 participants from IEC HQ and field offices including 2 from Census,2 from G & C and 2 from LO were attended. This session conducted in Pashto language and facilitated by 3 national Fully Accredited Facilitators (Mr.Awalul Rahman Roodwal, Abdul Ghafoor Ashiq, Dr.Rahim Syial, one International Advisor (George Baratashvili) who is also fully accredited and one co-facilitator (Abdul Basir Aziz).

The second session was conducted from 23 – 28 February 2008, 27 participants from IEC HQ & field offices (Provincial Election Officers and Training/Public outreach Officers) including 2 persons from each three above mentioned organizations were participated, this session conducted in Dari language and facilitated by 4 national Fully Accredited Facilitators ,one International advisor (Shahla Haque, Awalul Rahman Roodwal, Abdul Ghafoor Ashiq, Hamidullah and George Baratashvili) and one co-facilitator(Abdul Zahir Eztrabi).

The third session was conducted from 12 – 17 April 2008 in IEC headquarter, 26 participants from IEC HQ and field offices including 3 from Kabul Provincial Council and 2 from Census were attended, this session conducted in both local languages jointly and facilitated by 2 fully accredited facilitators (Shahla Haque and Khwaja Aminullah Fazli) and 2 co-facilitators (Dr. Akhtar and Abdul Basir Aziz).

Afghanistan conducted Parliamentary election in 2005 after 3 decades of wars and used the Provincial Administrative boundaries as election constituency. The Afghanistan constitution is indicated the District council members should be selected through free and fair election which 1/3 of the upper house members are selecting from these councils, but due to the non clarity of the district boundaries the election had been postponed.

The IECs realized the BD is much important and decided to conduct the BRIDGE module 4 training course for some senior IEC staff and other relevant organizations.

Over all these three sessions were going well , the participants actively participated and the most important was that , the participants from other organizations shared their experiences very friendly, more examples were giving from our won country.

The participants were satisfied with all training course management and performance, at the end of each session the participants expressed their grateful and appreciation from Afghan BRIDGE facilitator team, Australian BRIDGE team together with all other respectful partners, TAF and AusAID.

Participant’s views:

1. Census ( in near future we will conduct the Census in our country after many years, in this training program beside the content of these modules we learnt the new methodology of teaching which we already were not familiar with it, I found the BRIDGE as the best methodology, we will try to use your methodology during our training programs.
2. Provincial council (Wow, since 3.5 years that I have selected as PC member I always suggested and supported the PR system for our country instead of SNTV, but during these 6 days of BRIDGE training I found and realized that the PR system is not suitable for our country in this situation. he suggested to conduct the electoral system training program for our parliament members and PC members.)
3. Provincial Council (During our campaign 3 years before, I knew a little what should I do but didn’t know what should not do, right now I understood from this training how to conduct the campaign).
4. Geodesy and Cartography (I have participated in different workshops during my life (50 years old) but I found the BRIDGE environment totally different).