I think Ms. Bossenmaier has covered it well, but the numbers are fairly staggering. On the micro-credit loans, 66% of those have been provided to women. We've been forwarded results as to what impact that has had.
On issues of education in particular,
one-third of the six million students are girls and now have access to education, whereas they had none in 2001. It's not just a matter of giving girls access to education, but also of targeting all teacher training for women. Now 30% of teachers are women, and that enables girls to go to school.
We've also provided transportation. We always talk about girls' safety: we've ensured transportation for girls so that they can go to school.
On the issues of health, it has been targeted to things like obstetric care in the Mirwais hospital. The stats on the issues of literacy and health care for women are quite staggering. What we can say is that we've decreased those stats with regard to childhood mortality.
I'm quite comfortable in saying that when you can establish not only the 50 schools and the training of the teachers, but the 4,000 community learning centres, the literacy programs, and the vocational programs, we have in fact left Kandahar province and the rest of the country a little bit better off with regard to the state of women.
Moving forward, we have said that in our approach to all of our programming, which will be focused largely on children and youth, education, and humanitarian assistance, there will be a specific focus on the fate of women. I would be remiss not to add that with much of the $35 million that was provided by Canada on preparation for the elections and the building of institutions, we provided training to female candidates that reached 70% of the female candidates who ran for Parliament.
We've also provided female parliamentarians with the tools that we take for granted here, including offices, phones, and the ability to actually participate in the parliamentary process. We have been fairly stalwart in targeting our programming largely to women, from economic development to education to health, and we will continue to do that as we move forward--and I'm glad to provide details.