{ and personnel. Today we run effectively and efficiently; meeting or exceeding national and international nonprofit standards.” Those changes include: � CAI worked with the Montana attorney general’ s( AG) office to review and reinforce financial and project accounting, monitoring, oversight, systems and processes.
� Annual independent audits and international operations reviews have all been completed. Expenses were reviewed back to 2006. The AG has recently acknowledged to several charity watchdogs that CAI is in full compliance, although its office will continue oversight through April 2015.
� CAI replaced its former board of directors, welcoming eight new volunteer members with an array of professional skills and passion for the cause. It continues to seek new independent board members.
� CAI reinforced its management team with several new domestic and international professionals, all with excellent credentials and experience.
� With the help of outside advisors, CAI staff and board worked together to meld the organization’ s values, vision, mission, and strategies into an integrated business plan and longer-term strategic plan.
� CAI restructured Mortenson’ s role. No longer directly involved in governance, management or finances, he is free to build upon his experience and extensive network of relationships to champion new program development, communications, and fundraising.
“ Today, CAI passes the acid test,” Thaden said.“ We have made solid operating improvements, satisfied the inquiries of the courts and numerous government agencies, and had multiple years of successful independent audits and IRS filings.
“ CAI did get mud on its boots. Working at the forefront of change in difficult and often dangerous circumstances, people and organizations sometimes stumble. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes, consolidate your gains, get up, dust off and keeping going. I’ m proud of our staff and partners. We have a strong staff here supporting experienced, reliable working partners overseas.”
WORK CONTINUES Experience matters. Empowering impoverished, isolated and neglected mountain communities through education takes patience. It takes perseverance. And it requires empathy and hope. Add war, extremism, political turmoil, government corruption, narcotics trafficking, and misogynistic cultures and it’ s no wonder the rest of the world despairs of things ever changing.
“ Talk to anyone about this part of the world and there is a sense that it is hopeless,” said CAI Board Member George McCown.“ The international community has spent all this money, but for what? Well, there is some good stuff going on there. And we’ re doing it.”
Throughout this period of enormous change internally and in the countries where we work, CAI has continued to maintain its schools, build new schools, and sustain and expand programs overseas, Thaden said.
One of CAI’ s most recent endeavors was construction and support of four schools in Tajikistan’ s Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast( GBAO). Although separated from Afghanistan and Pakistan by political boundaries and a vastly different 20th century experience as part of the Soviet Union, GBAO
“ CAI did get mud on its boots. Working at the forefront of change in difficult and often dangerous circumstances, people and organizations sometimes stumble. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes, consolidate your gains, get up, dust off and keep going.”
— Jim Thaden, CAI Executive Director shares many of the same problems: poverty, isolation, discrimination, and neglect.
Tajikistan is the poorest of the former Soviet-bloc countries. Its education infrastructure is crumbling and the government has not reinvested in school buildings, teacher training, or equal access to higher education. The result is the first generation of young Tajiks with less education than their parents.
CAI worked with GBAO education officials to select four villages in need of new school buildings: Zhymag, Kona Kurgan, Langhar, and Vanqala.
Zhymag is at the end of a dirt road that follows the Yazghularm River up into the mountains. It’ s a pastoral village, filled with fruit trees and tidy white houses with the traditional Tajik-blue trim. Its school was damaged in a 2010 earthquake. Although the building was cracked and crumbing, the villagers had no choice but to keep using it; the government wasn’ t offering repairs and the villagers didn’ t have the money. Yet they know education is key to building a better future.
Zhymag’ s school administrators also hope the new 10-classroom building will help with retention of female students. Of 302 students, 147 are girls, School Director Mibishoyev Akobirsho said, but only a handful make it to graduation.
In Tajikistan,“ Enrollment and attendance rates at primary school( grades 1-4) are very high for both sexes, but by grade nine, roughly one-fourth of girls no longer attend school,” according to a UNICEF country report.
But it’ s a fact that for every year a girl stays in school her odds for a better life increase.
The students say the new building is“ fresh.”“ There’ s lots of light,” one girl said.“ It’ s not so crowded,” another said.
“ Now girls have seen the new building and want to stay for higher classes,” said Imomuddin Subzalievish, a retired brigadier who helps with school.
Rokia has made it to 11 class and now hopes to go on to medical school.“ I want to be a doctor and do service for my people,” she said.“ There is no doctor in our village. I would go to Dushanbe and come back to be a doctor here.”
Medical training involves three years of college, followed by six years of university. Where the money will come from, she’ s not sure. The cost of education in Tajikistan keeps rising as the government shifts payment to students and their families.
But Akobirsho is optimistic that the
4 | Journey of Hope C E N T R A L A S I A I N S T I T U T E