KABUL -- USIP runs a number of grant programs through which the Institute provides resources to local organizations to provide services, build capacity or do analysis of a certain problem on the ground. USIP currently operates about five such programs in Afghanistan. The Bond Street Theater project is a relatively small program for USIP in which trained actors from the international community use theater as an educational tool to show Afghan adults, students and children ways to prevent low-level conflict within families or communities. The program focuses on rule of law, civil rights, access to justice and other community issues that breed violence on different levels.
Bond Street has presented programs at the Afghan National Civil Order Police, or ANCOP, two conventions of the National Police directors and staff, two drug addiction centers, three juvenile correction centers and three women's prisons. It has also presented at women's shuras in more remote villages. Officials at Bond Street note that while theater isn't necessarily a way to communicate to the masses, in the same way television or radio do, it is highly interactive, and therefore it can be that much more effective.
Joanna Sherman, artistic director of the New York-based organization, sat down recently at the National Theater of Afghanistan in Kabul to explain the project and how it helps men and women and children, too, to better understand basic ideas of how to prevent conflict, in big ways and in small.
Gordon Lubold is a senior adviser and writer at USIP.
