From the very start, the Garden of Flowers Montessori Preschool was meant to serve those destitute families who would never be able to send their children to preschool. For this reason, we do not collect fees. There is a profusion of private, fee-based schools in Kabul, but the Garden of Flowers is there for the local community; our staff work hard to reach out to the poorest families and invite them to enroll their children for free.
That being said, it is a feature of the human psyche that sometimes when something is free, it is taken for granted or less valued. This has not been our experience at the GoF; parents regularly express their respect and appreciation. But in order to maintain dignity and connection, we and the GoF staff decided to institute a monthly contribution program.
In this program, families were requested to donate something monthly, whatever they can manage, and it needn’t be money. It can be food, pencils, flower pots. It can be in-kind contributions of cleaning, repairing, or tailoring.
Families responded warmly and enthusiastically. Soon afterwards, children began arriving with armfuls of bread from their father’s bakery, or a pot of homemade yogurt, or a bag of fresh plums brought from the family trip to the provinces, or bags of outgrown clothes. The children then help prepare the food that was given. 
One boy even brought a bag with 5 kg of flour, which the children used to make bread dough and have it baked in their classmate’s father’s bakery!
The team has had to sometimes clarify the nature of contributions requested – no more bottles of soda or bags of candy please! But overall the program has been very positive and successful, bringing together the children and their families into a sense of solidarity and support, while also getting to know each other even better – the very definition of community.
