December 25, 2002	Wednesday	Shawwal 20, 1423

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WASHINGTON, Dec 24: As part of its reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, the United States has used vegetable oil to encourage families to send their girls to school.

The strategy did succeed in bringing more girls to the classrooms, reporters were told at a briefing at the US State Department on Monday.

Officials of the US Agency for International Development told the briefing as in many developing countries, families in Afghanistan have the tendency to keep their girls at home while sending boys to schools.

“In many areas where we’re having trouble getting the number of girls to equal the number of boys in the classrooms ... we used this vegetable oil” to bring the girls out,” said Andrew Natsios, administrator, US Agency for International Development.

“What we did was ... to give a supplement of vegetable oil, which is a very valued commodity in Afghanistan, to families’ monthly ration if they made sure their girls were in school,” he added. And in those areas that we did that, we were able to equalize the rates.”

Natsios said the American reconstruction effort has four objectives in Afghanistan: to continue humanitarian assistance, to strengthen the Afghan government, to accelerate economic growth and to improve the lives of average Afghan citizens.