Julia Bolz picked up a $6,700 check at Coe Elementary School on Valentine's Day, Feb. 14, for a girls school in Afghanistan that was built with the help of the Queen Anne students.
The check, which included $1,300 donated by an anonymous Coe parent, capped an effort that began in 2002 when Bolz - a Queen Anne resident and former attorney - stopped by the neighborhood school with a show-and-tell presentation that included Principal David Elliott donning a burqa, the head-to-toe covering Afghan women were forced to wear under the Taliban regime.
"And it fit," grinned Elliott at a lunch assembly on Monday that featured a slide show of the Afghan school, its students, staff and a burqa-clad Elliott, along with Afghan food donated by the Kabul Restaurant in Wallingford.
The students and their parents raised more than $4,000 for the school the first year. "We had kids cleaning out their bank accounts," Elliott remembered.
The latest efforts saw similar sacrifices, said Laura Protextor, the mother of a Coe kindergartner. "They've all emptied their piggybanks," she said, adding that donation boxes for the Afghan school were full of "all their special stuff."
Coe third-grader Gwen Coombs-Miller and her mother Kara Coombs raised $285 selling homemade cookies. "She did the cookies; I did the rest," Gwen said. Of that money, $145 went to the Afghan school, while the rest went to tsunami relief, Kara said.
Bolz didn't start out with the idea of tapping school kids for donations. A legal and business consultant for non-profit organizations that work in the developing world, Bolz - who has lived in roughly 60 countries - said she applied for grants to help rebuild Afghanistan following the America-led war that ousted the Taliban. "The grants were not approved."
But a Coe parent asked her to give a talk at the school about Afghanistan. The literacy rate in Afghanistan at the time was 6 percent, girls were not allowed to go to school under the Taliban, and they were often sold off as laborers to rug-making companies in Pakistan or to men as wives, Bolz told the students.
"And when girls were allowed to go to school, none existed," she added. Coe students asked what they could do to help, and that's when their fundraising effort was launched.
The school Coe students helped finance cost around $35,000 to build in 2003, and it started out with 420 girls and six teachers, Bolz said. The school is located near Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, and it now has roughly 1,000 girls and 20 teachers, she said. "And what has happened is this school became a model throughout Afghanistan."
However, not everybody in the country thought sending girls to school was proper when work began on the school. In fact, Bolz said, there was a $200,000 bounty being offered for her death and the death of her other teammates, all of whom are affiliated with Texas-based Millennium Relief and Development Services.
Bolz doesn't think the bounty is still in effect, but she nevertheless is cautious and did not want to reveal the exact location of the school Coe students and parents helped build. She also requested that photos of other team members not be published because doing so could put them in danger of extremist retaliation should they be seen on the Internet.
Education is key to overcoming extremism, Bolz believes. "When you change a child, you change a family; when you change a family, you change a community; and when you change a community, you change a country."
Bolz said by the end of the next year there will be 12 girls schools in northern Afghanistan, and she believes their presence will help bridge a cultural divide between Americans and Afghanis.
"It's not about throwing money at a problem," she said. The most popular American TV shows in developing countries are Baywatch and professional wrestling bouts, both of which provide a fantasy view of America, Bolz said.
On the flip side, many Americans believe anyone wearing a turban is a terrorist, a view that is equally invalid, she noted.
Elliott agrees that the fundraising effort at his school will make a difference. "It's been such a tremendous learning experience for them," he said of his students. "It's not just about them and their little world on Queen Anne."
Instead, it's about Coe school kids forming relationships with children in another country by learning about them, he said.
It's a comment Bolz echoed this week. The newest donation will be used to put in an addition that's needed at the Afghan school because there are so many new students there now, and she said the walls of the school have artwork created by Coe students.
Bolz also said she went to Afghanistan last fall with three shipping containers full of school supplies purchased with Coe donations. "And I went into the school and handed something to every child on your behalf," Bolz said.[[In-content Ad]]
