[MUSIC] I'm privileged to be meeting with Ahmad Sarmast today. Ahmad has set up the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul. And it's one of the most inspirational stories of music education in the 21st century, that I wanted to share with you. Naturally, it has a technological link, but Ahmad I was wondering if we could start off by talking about the philosophy behind the setting up of the school. The years of the Taliban draconian policy against music, arts, after 30 years of war left a very negative impact on the musical life of Afghanistan. And practically cut all cultural and musical ties of Afghanistan within the national community. While at the same time the people of the country were deprived from the basic human rights. That was also the reason that I wanted to establish Afghanistan nationally music to contribute to all those elements and needs of Afghan society, while including the revival of Afghan music. And promoting cultural diversity and musical diversity in Afghanistan as part of establishing civil society. Because without cultural diversity, we shouldn't say that all right, we're building a civil society. What kind of civil society are we building if an Afghan child or an Afghan will be deprived of learning Western classical music or playing jazz or not being allowed to learn its own musical culture. Or not being allowed or unable to get engaged in cultural dialogue to any means that can be understandable to the wider community. So therefore, also the establishment of Afghanistan National Institute of Music was significantly important. [MUSIC] All over the country, we have created opportunities for kids from such an isolated part of the country like Luristan, or Quinal, which are, right now, the center of war and terror attacks. But we have both boys and girls from this part of the country. We have kids from northern part of the country in our school, so right now, Afghanistan National Institute of Music and the makeup of our student community is a beautiful mosaic of Afghan ethnicity. We've got representative of every ethnic group of the country. Support of ordinary people is significantly important and that's why we are not ready to give up. We have every reason to continue even after attack of the most extremist elements when they send us 17 year, young boy, to explode himself in one of our concert in 2014. Still the school community's very resolved, very strong, and we have the full support of the families to continue our work. In spite of that attack, we did not lose any students. No family come to say hey the music school is under attack or you're a target of the extremists so we take our kids out of the school and they move them or send them or transfer them to another school. On contrary after this attack we audition over 250 students only for 50 places this year and that's in the account that we're not publicizing our audition or enrollment. It just people who are coming. So the support of the people is important, I remember after the bombing how many come to the hospital to offer their support, to students, and to myself. So, that's why we eager to continue our work, and we don't have doubt. We didn't have doubt, even for a second after the bombing, and right after the bombing, and in coming weeks, not to stop or not to continue work. I want to move on to the technology, obviously, which is the focus of our course. Yes. And as I understand it, technology's impacted what you can do at the school in a couple of different ways. In 2012 given that need of the school and also the importance of technology. How technology is bringing closer the international community and practically converted the world into a small globe, a small village. So we also procured facilities that enables us to bring a music teacher from any part of the world into a class. So we've got a distance learning center in our school with one of, up-to-date video conferencing system which enables us to collaborate with many music educators from around the world. To who investing in the professional development of our students and assisting us in those areas where we don't have expertise within the country or we're not able to bring someone else of an expert faculty to assist us. So we have got the distance learning facilities and room. And up to now it's not just for the educational purposes we use it but also from time to time just to connect our youths to their peers around the world. We have good contact with number of music institution around the world. Around the world with whom, we're linking our students. Sometimes they're asking questions about each other's culture, background, countries and then they play live for each other. [MUSIC] [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC] While at the same time we are using this technology for bringing teachers, we have been this year, from the very beginning of this academic year we have been working with the Royal Academy of Music from Aarhus, Denmark. And this program will continue until the end of this academic year. We need a classical guitar teacher. So thanks to this partnership and thanks to this technology our guitar studio and students being enormously benefiting from the teaching of colleagues and friends from Denmark. And at the same time we had a trumpet teacher on a weekly basis teaching our students on various levels. Also they contributed to the professional development of our junior faculty because when we have around ten expert faculty, but we know that they cannot stay in Afghanistan for longer. And we have to invest in youths of the country who will be replacing them slowly one after another. Therefore we are employing our own graduates as junior faculty. And that partnership with the Royal Academy of Music was also significant, important in training this junior faculty as music educators. Well thank you so much for sharing your story with us, it's absolutely inspiring and I think the work that you're doing is incredibly important and special. Underneath this video, I've put some links to the website of the institute where you can find out more about what's going on there and perhaps even ways that you could be involved or donate. [MUSIC]
