The idea for the Afghan Schools Trust started with three young men from the remote northeastern province of Nuristan who had been educated as refugees in Pakistan during the 1980s Russian occupation and who, from age 11, had been trained to fight in the many real battles needed to keep their secular schools open.

In 1996 they came in contact with Robin Ade, a visiting fisherman from Scotland who, over the following few years, encouraged them in their dream of bringing education to the illiterate population of upper Nuristan and offered to provide the initial funding. The dream became reality in August 2001 when the first secular, co-educational primary school was opened with permission of the Taleban authorities. Messages were exchanged by hand between the pupils of Lumrukdesh primary school and those of Carsphairn primary school in SW Scotland.

The Trust was formed in 2003 with the agreed aim of establishing a small number of schools and then to keep them open in a conservative rural area Bragamatal district on the Kati river 200 miles north of Jalalabad. This is a land of great river gorges, high mountains and Afghanistan's last remaining natural forest dominated by the great deodar cedars which form the raw material for Nuristans unique woodcarving tradition. The mountains are also home to most of the countrys large wild animals  snow leopard, black and brown bear, two species of wolf and the world's largest wild sheep and goats still survive here. Nuristan is an obvious candidate for a World Heritage Site.

The local economy is based on the distinctive black cattle while goats and wheat provide the main subsistence diet. Nuristan has a peculiary egalitarian culture which does not allow for concentration of wealth; nor does it have a money economy or modern infrastructure. For these reasons, and the fact that the literacy level is under 1%, local people have little chance of financing and running schools without outside help. Security concerns make such help unlikely and Afghan Schools Trust is the only outside body currently working with the 100,000 plus population of upper Nuristan.

Nuristanis are hard working and well organised and every village including so-called extremist ones have wanted to donate land for schools. By the end of 2007 five had been completed with a total pupil role in excess of 700. While building work went on classes were held in mosques, the only community buildings, and in the remote village of Samanak, at the head of the Katigal valley, classes are still being held in the village mosque.

In 2005 the Afghan Government inspected the schools, declared them to be the best in the whole northeast of the country, and offered to take over teachers pay, our main running cost. This gave us an opportunity to fund the first mother-and-child healthcare scheme under the direction of doctor Zulaikha, a trained women's doctor from the area who had long wanted an opportunity to help reduce the infant mortality rate of around 50%. Her work with us started in the summer of 2006 and continues.

We would like to emphasize that the success of the Afghan Schools programme has relied on trust and close cooperation with our co-ordinators who do most of the hard work. All of them are community leaders from the schools area and none are paid for their work.

The programme has not been without its problems. There have been excitements involving military factions both local and foreign. In 2005 Nuristan suffered its worst ever natural disaster when wheat harvests were lost to early snowfalls and that winter its few roads, and most of the ancient bridges spanning river gorges, were lost to snow avalanches and floods.

Another problem has been a significant drop in the enrollment of girl students who, when we started, were more numerous than boys. The main reason for this is the fact that there is no facility for further education for girls and it causes stress to them and their families when their only choice after schooling is to work on the family farm.

It is vital to the future of Nuristan for qualified local people to attain higher education and

return home to work. In 2006 the first group of male students educated at our schools arrived in the capital, Kabul, and enrolled in government colleges. We undertook to provide food and accomodation while we worked on the next step the creation of a student hostel capable of accomodating not only male students but also female students who are normally unable to stay away from their families. In October 2007 plans were completed and land aquired for a 40-student facility outside Kabul which, given the funding, could result in the first generation of educated community leaders for Nuristan.

For the first five years we worked on an annual budget of around £6000 donated by local Scottish schools and interested people both in Scotland and abroad. We had no administration costs. The recent commitment to the hostel as well as to completing a strategic network of schools in upper Nuristan has meant we have had to raise our financial expectations. We now have a target of over £100,000 for the hostel and four new schools which can be built as soon as this funding becomes available.

In February 2008 we got news that teachers from all the schools are arriving in Kabul for a series of training courses and that the first qualified young woman from the area is going home to Nuristan to give courses for female teachers at our recently completed girls school.

While the media concentrates on the bad news from Afghanistan we believe our small charity is having a positive impact on a strategic part of the country normally regarded as being under extremist control.