New Delhi: - On August 13, 2015, Deputy Chief of Mission M. Ashraf Haidari was invited to visit the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi. He met the Director of the Institute and members of his staff, who work through the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) and the Jesuit Commons, to engage prominent Jesuit universities, including Georgetown University in Washington DC and others, to provide and facilitate “higher education at the margins,” meaning in the war-torn societies, such as Afghanistan, where access to quality higher education that meets international standards is largely unavailable.

“We welcome any non-evangelical work from faith-based non-profit organizations, which focus on sustainable poverty reduction and development, in line with the national development priority objectives of the Afghan government, and I know that JRS has followed this path through their limited but highly effective human resource development programs in Afghanistan,” said Mr. Haidari. He welcomed a proposal by JRS to establish online graduate classes in Herat, in partnership with well-established and accredited Jesuit universities in the United States.  

“I understand that there may be some regulatory restrictions vis-à-vis online graduate programs. However, if they’re properly discussed with the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education, they would mostly likely consider benefiting from the quality online education to be offered by Jesuit universities such as Georgetown,” Mr. Haidari told the Institute.

Moreover, some of the Afghan beneficiaries of the JRS technical capacity building programs spoke, thanking the JRS for the skills they’ve learned, which they now use to train other Afghans to enhance their employability in the public and private sectors.