Counselling training in Afghanistan: the long term development of the INSPIRE project

Between 2010 and 2014, the British Council funded a project under a scheme called INSPIRE, which involved training a group of 20 Afghan practitioners in counselling skills. The participants were from Kabul and Herat and the University of Herat were partners in the project. The ethos of the programme was based on co-constructing a model of transcultural training that could be applicable within the Afghan context (Berdondini et al., 2014). As an outcome, in 2016 the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education approved the launch of a Counselling Department and a Student Counselling Service within the University of Herat. This article aims to present and analyse the long term development of INSPIRE in Afghanistan from the perspective of some participants. Reflections on future implementation of this approach and training programs are also included.