Sunday, October 20, 2013
Kabul (BNA) The Indo-Afghan Foundation (IAF) earmarks an annual budget of $1 million which will be expended for cultural programs.
IAF has 10 members who include Co-chairmen of the India-Afghan Foundation including Indian Ambassador to Kabul Amar Sinha, Afghan Ambassador to New Delhi Shaida Mohammad Abdali. And there are four Afghan directors including Prof. Fahim Gandar, Prof. Azizi of the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan, Ms. Najiba Maram Acting Editor-in-Chief of The Kabul Times from Ministry of Information and Culture, Mr. Delawar Safiullah Afghan diplomat based in New Delhi; and four Indian directors including Anand Sahay, Prof. Shahid Mehdi, Prof. Ram Guha and Mr. Niteen Yeola Indian diplomat based in Kabul.
The IAF meets twice a year and draws programs of action and funds small projects which creates close relation among the peoples of the two countries.
The objective is to keep up our old relationships and conduct initiatives for strengthening the relation according to the needs of the time. We are also active in social media networks online, creating accounts in Facebook, essay competitions.
MoU was signed in 2007 and started activities in 2008. And we plan to outreach to a larger number of people. We are also trying to involve alumnus who came back to Afghanistan who can help along with the ministry of education to brief the new people. The purpose of this foundation is to keep this old civilization of relationships between Afghanistan and India always alive, kept in the memories of the two peoples that we are sharing an identity and that identity is derived from cultural ties and those ties can be preserved through continued cultural activities and educational interactions between the two countries. We also agreed on establishing research centers in universities such as Kandahar University and Jawahar Lal Nehro University where scholars will have access to books and archives. We have discussed with the Academy of Sciences about ethnographic experts in museums. We also plan to translate books such as struggle of non-violence by Mahatma Gandhi. We also agreed on research programs and PhDs and to train scholars in museums and cooperation of national archives.
