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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Projects are in the works to help local Afghans stabilize their country and strengthen their government through the efforts of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team. The KPRT consists of both military and civilian personnel working together to empower the local government through the people.
“We try to increase the opportunities that the Afghans have,” said Aditya Raval, a public diplomacy field officer working for the KPRT.
Working closely with public diplomacy is a big part of the job, Raval said. He said that many of their projects are funded through public diplomacy grants and some of them allow Afghans to travel to America for eight-to 10-week seminars to learn skills such as business development, and upon return they are able to pass on what they have learned to their fellow Afghans.
Agricultural projects are also being implemented.
“We are training the Afghans to farm for themselves,” Raval said.
“We are building canals with our Afghan brothers and sisters so they can have a sustainable agricultural base here.”
Raval believes sustainability is achieved through accessing the capabilities the Afghans have in the province and understanding the types of projects they are interested in and what their needs are.
Another sustainable project in the works is the Regional Afghan Municipalities Program for Urban Populations. RAMP UP has three phases: capacity building, service delivery and revenue generation.
Capacity building entails training a large enough municipality staff where advisers are no longer needed. Service delivery involves working with the city to design and create projects that deliver critical services such as waste management, household registration and public sanitation. The final phase is the generation of revenue where the inhabitants are charged for services and pay taxes to keep the city going; therefore making the city self sustainable.
The KPRT also has projects to help improve the quality of life for Afghans in Kandahar City.
Culverts are being built to help water drainage during the rainy season, schools are being upgraded to increase capacity, sidewalks are being repaired, the quality of ditches and roads are being improved, wells and clinics are being built to improve the overall health of Afghans in the city, and bridges are being built to improve transportation routes.
Raval and his teammates work closely with the Kandahar Governor’s Office to ensure they are spreading the good word about projects under construction, he said.
“I’m just a very small cog in this huge wheel known as the U.S. Government presence in Afghanistan,” Raval said. “It’s about working with your teammates – Afghan, military and other coalition countries to try and push forward some momentum that we’ve built upon in the past few months in hopes that the progress we are building here is sustainable and the end result is the Afghans will be able to stand on their own after 2014.”
| Date Taken: | 06.25.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 06.25.2011 11:20 |
| Story ID: | 72727 |
| Location: | KANDAHAR, AF |
| Web Views: | 407 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, KPRT helps Afghans strengthen Afghanistan, by SGT April York, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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