HINDU KUSH REGION · AFGHANISTAN
Education is how a region changes itself.
One unfinished roof stands between 2,000 students a year and a permanent school. $20,000 completes it.
Niaz Afghan School · Baghlan province
The school that's already here
Twenty years of learning, still under canvas
Niaz Afghan School isn't a plan on paper. It has been open, teaching, and running for two decades. Eight hundred children come to it from sixteen villages. They sit on mats on the ground. In winter the cold comes down off the mountains and they sit in it. In summer the sun stands on the canvas and the air underneath stops moving. When the rains come the ground turns to mud and the lessons stop. Boys and girls both. Sixteen villages send them, and there is nowhere else for them to go.
20
Years running
Continuous operation since founding
8
Tents in use
Every classroom is a tent today
6
Days a week
Saturday through Thursday
A full school day, split in two
There aren't enough tents for every student at once, so the day runs in two shifts — open from 7 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon.
7:00 – 11:00 AM
Morning group arrives at sunrise
11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Afternoon group takes the same tents
Eight tents, every classroom
Cloth walls. Dirt floors. Sun in the summer, freezing wind in the winter. This is where lessons happen every single day.
Eight tents, holding every grade, every subject, every day.
A full curriculum, taught in every tent
The children learn the same core subjects any child anywhere would.
English
Math
Science
History
Geography
The project
Niaz Afghan School has existed for twenty years without a building. Classes have been held in tents — freezing through the winter, unusable in the rain. Sixteen villages send their children to it, and there is nowhere else for them to go.
A permanent nine-room school now stands on the site. Walls, floors, window frames, and doorways are finished. The steel roof beams are already laid across the top. It is a school in every respect except one: it has no roof, and until it does it cannot open.
The same sixteen villages. The same demand. The only thing that changes is that there is somewhere to put them.
Eight hundred children attend today, in tents, in whatever weather the season brings. The building is what raises that number: nine rooms serving more than 2,000 students a year from the same sixteen villages. The demand is already there. What has been missing is somewhere to put it.
The site
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Watch the build
Foundations, walls, and beams — three years in three short clips.
What $20,000 does
Every figure comes from the builder’s estimate on site.
| Item | Material | Qty | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roof frame | Metal beams | 830 m | $6,070 |
| Roof frame | Wood | 110 m | $5,918 |
| Roof frame | Welding | — | $350 |
| Roof deck | Plastic sheeting | 31×14 m | $175 |
| Roof deck | Plastic coating | 31×14 m | $180 |
| Masonry | Cement | 73 bags | $740 |
| Item | Material | Qty | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Masonry | Sand | 9 bags | $350 |
| Masonry | Brick | 12,058 | $750 |
| Labor | Skilled labor | — | $1,700 |
| Labor | Carpentry | — | $350 |
| Transport | To site | — | $700 |
| Site works | Retaining wall | — | $2,717 |
| Materials and labor | $17,283 |
| Total | $20,000 |
The building
Tap the plan to enlarge
Roof beam layout — nine rooms, 350 square meters under roof, beams at 500 mm centres.
Six years of building
This isn't a plan. It's what we've already done.
Kator Foundation started with an idea. Six years later, it's six schools, ninety-five teachers, and more than seventeen thousand students who walked through our doors and got a real education because someone finally believed they were worth it.
6
Learning centers
Built by us across the region
17,000+
Students taught
7,000+ girls & 10,000+ boys
95
Teachers
40 women and 55 men on staff
1,200
Girls in class today
Currently enrolled, ages 7 to 17
Six learning centers
Each center has five classrooms and five to seven teachers. We built every one of them ourselves — walls, roofs, chalkboards, and all — across the Hindu Kush region.
Ninety-five teachers
Forty women and fifty-five men teach across our centers, full-time and part-time. Many of the female teachers are widows or single mothers — the sole earners for their families.
Seventeen thousand students
Over six years, more than seven thousand girls and ten thousand boys, ages seven to eighteen, have completed our programs. Twelve hundred girls sit in our classrooms today.
The women who teach here
Forty women teachers — and for many, this paycheck holds the whole family together
Many of our female teachers are widows, single mothers, or the only earner in their household. When we pay them a living wage, we aren't just staffing a classroom — we're keeping families housed, fed, and standing.
What our students actually learn
Real skills, not just lessons
Our students don't just learn to read and write. They learn to build, code, repair, design, and lead. The curriculum is deliberately practical — skills that put food on the table and change what a life can look like.
Computer fundamentals
The youngest start with basic computer skills — the foundation for everything that comes next.
Adobe design suite
Older students learn Photoshop and Illustrator — real design skills for real work.
AI and LLM literacy
Prompt writing, image generation, and using AI tools to build actual working websites.
Mobile phone repair
Weekly hands-on workshops teaching a trade that earns income anywhere in the country.
Solar panel repair
In a region with unreliable power, knowing how to fix a solar setup is a livelihood.
Healthcare at home
How to build a healthy household and get the right information to protect a family.
Climate awareness
How climate change is reshaping their region — and what their generation can do about it.
And more every year
The curriculum grows with the students. We add whatever they'll need next.
The hostel program
For our best students, we go all the way to a degree
Some students need more than a school day. We built our own dormitory, and the students who live there get everything they need to finish a bachelor's or master's degree — on us.
- Our own dormitory facility
- Three meals a day, every day
- Full university tuition covered
- Bachelor's and master's degrees
- Hospital training partnerships
- Tech center internships
Why we fund buildings
The Kator Foundation funds capacity rather than programs. A workshop ends when the funding does. A school that a community owns outright keeps working for thirty years, and everything that happens inside it compounds.
This building is regional infrastructure. Sixteen villages, three school levels, more than 2,000 students a year, and a permanent site that can host adult literacy, teacher training, and vocational instruction outside school hours. Digital skills teaching is the clearest example: it requires a secure room with power, and once that room exists it can serve the whole district rather than one grade.
We prioritize partnerships built on local leadership because the people closest to a problem understand it best. This school was the community's request. They came to us, told us what they needed, and chose the site. The Kator Foundation funded it — every brick, every beam, every day of labor — and one line item is all that remains.
Why a roof is not just a roof
A secure building changes what school can be. Attendance holds through winter instead of collapsing. Teachers can be recruited and kept. Students can move from one grade to the next in the same place rather than dropping out between levels.
For girls, the difference is larger still. Where a safe, permanent, supervised building exists, families send their daughters and keep sending them. Where it does not, girls are the first to be withdrawn. A roof is the difference between a girl finishing primary school and a girl finishing high school.
This is the smallest possible intervention with the largest possible return: one building, one community, one generation that can read, and the generation after that which will take it for granted.
What a building makes possible
A tent cannot hold a computer. It has no power, no lock on the door, and nothing to stop the dust or the rain. For twenty years the ceiling on what this school could teach was set by the fact that it had no ceiling.
Nine rooms with a roof changes that. A building that can be secured is a building that can hold equipment. It can be wired. It can be locked at night and opened in the morning with everything still in it. That is the difference between a school that teaches children to read and a school that can teach them what to do next.
Our intention for this school is a computer and digital skills program — typing, basic computing, internet literacy, and the practical skills that turn into work. Not because technology is fashionable, but because of what it does for a girl in Baghlan province.
A girl who learns to read has more choices than she had. A girl who learns to use a computer has something rarer: the possibility of an income that does not require her to leave her village or ask anyone’s permission. In a place where a woman’s options narrow early and sharply, that is not a small thing. It is the difference between depending on a household and contributing to one.
That work comes after the building. The facility has to exist first — a secure room, power, a door that locks — and then the equipment and the teaching can follow. This is phase one of a longer plan, and it is the phase everything else waits on.
None of it is possible in a tent. All of it starts with a roof.
What this makes possible
Think about where a girl who starts here at nine ends up at twenty-five. She has been literate for fifteen years. She has used a computer for most of them. The work she can do is not limited to what exists within walking distance of her village, because a great deal of the world's work no longer requires anyone to be anywhere in particular. Remote is not a lesser option in a place like this — it is the option that removes distance from the equation entirely.
Now multiply that by 2,000 students a year, across sixteen villages, over a generation. A district where women can earn is a district that is harder to leave and easier to stay in. Families keep their daughters in school because school demonstrably leads somewhere. Younger girls grow up watching older ones do work their mothers could not have imagined. That is not a change to one life. It is a change to what the place expects of itself.
None of it happens without a room with a roof, a teacher, and a computer. That is what $20,000 finishes.
What we build
The Kator Foundation works across the Hindu Kush because education does more than teach children to read. It changes what a community is able to decide for itself.
We look at where the need is greatest across northern Afghanistan and we build there. Schools, first — permanent buildings that will still be standing in thirty years — and then the teaching and the equipment that make them worth walking to.
Technology is central to that. A school with a secure room and power can hold computers, and a girl who learns to use one at nine grows up expecting the modern world to include her. Education opens the door; technology decides how far she can walk through it.
Ways to give
Every level below is a real piece of the roof.
Your name goes on the wall
When the school opens, a permanent plaque inside the building will carry the name of every person who helped finish it. Long after the roof is on, the students will know who put it there.
A PERMANENT PLAQUE INSIDE THE SCHOOL
Other ways to give
Every dollar goes to the roof.
Zelle
Send to
donation@katorfoundation.org
Bank transfer
Account number
629150092
Routing number
322271627
Kator Foundation is a trusted non-profit charity serving the needy people of Northern Afghanistan.
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Registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit · EIN 85-1654570 · Contributions are tax-deductible
Questions
Is my donation tax-deductible?
Yes. Kator Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3), EIN 85-1654570. You will receive a receipt by email and a written acknowledgment for your records.
Who will the school serve?
More than 2,000 students a year, from sixteen villages. Boys and girls both.
What happens if you raise more than $20,000?
Anything past the goal stays with this school — furniture, supplies, and getting the doors open.
Can I see how it is going?
Yes — reach out any time at donation@katorfoundation.org and we will tell you exactly where things stand. We do not post regular photo and video updates on the site. The safety of our students, teachers, and staff comes first, and the less we publish about who is there and when, the safer they are.
$20,000. One roof. 2,000 students a year.
Twenty years of school without a building. This is the last step.
Kator Foundation is a U.S. registered nonprofit 501(c)(3), EIN 85-1654570. Contributions are tax-deductible.
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