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"Last June at a school in Afghanistan&amp;amp;#8217;s Logar province, two gunmen ambushed female students, killing two and wounding six. It was another in a string of terrifying attacks: In the past two years, 231 of the country&amp;amp;#8217;s students and teachers have been killed; 240 schools have been destroyed; and 590 schools have closed due to the threat of violence, leaving more than 200,000 students with nowhere to go. The presumed culprits: Taliban vigilantes opposed to educating girls, or extremists bent on destabilizing the country. The violence is not directed solely at girls, but experts agree that it&amp;amp;#8217;s keeping them at home and exacerbating an educational crisis in a country where only 5 percent of eligible girls are enrolled in secondary school to begin with. Although Afghanistan has&amp;amp;#8212;finally&amp;amp;#8212;enshrined women&amp;amp;#8217;s rights in its constitution, girls are still under attack for exercising their right to get an education. Says Zama Coursen-Neff, deputy director of the Children&amp;amp;#8217;s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, &amp;amp;#8220;Parents say, &amp;amp;#8216;We want our daughter to go to school. But is it worth risking her life?&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;amp;#8221; Educating girls is one of the best ways to create a better future for the next generation, international experts say. So how can you help? In this case, money can open doors. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch, the Feminist Majority Foundation and the National Geographic Society (through its Afghan Girls Fund) are working to build new schools, increase educational opportunities for girls and ensure their safety. Even a small donation could help a girl get schooling. Says Coursen-Neff: &amp;amp;#8220;Afghanistan will not move forward until it starts educating its girls.&amp;amp;#8221; How you can help Several aid organizations are working to do everything from building girls schools to ensuring their safety--efforts that can be critical, since many schools created post-Taliban are tents or seats under a tree, which can make girls easy targets. There&amp;#x27;s also a shortage of 80,000 teachers, according to Afghanistan&amp;#x27;s Ministry of Education, which affects girls disproportionately, since communities often frown upon men teaching girls. Even the smallest donation from you can help the girls of Afghanistan. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2008/04/afghanistan-girls-killed-for-going-to-school>