Influenced by the pastor in her local church who encouraged members to follow their hearts and to help others not so fortunate, she told her herself, “I can help – I know how to teach hands-on science, using materials found locally that are free or inexpensive. I can help bring schools back to life – to teach people to question and discover, to help them improve their daily lives.” The question was how to make it happen.

June 2003
Through a friendship with a local Afghan woman in Mill Valley, California, Camilla learned about an opportunity to go to Afghanistan with The Global Exchange, an organization that promotes world peace through people-to-people tours in countries with difficulties. Within three weeks, she was on a plane heading for Afghanistan.

Walking around Kabul on her own (much to the dismay of her fellow travelers), Camilla found the Aschiana School which catered to street children, offering them breakfast and lunch and some education. They didn’t have a science class because they didn’t have a science teacher.  And so she taught the first hands-on science class ever taught in Afghanistan. She was offered lodging, breakfast and lunch and an English translator if she could come back, even for just five weeks.

July 2003
It was July 4 in the United States and Camilla was home. She took a long walk as she heard the fireworks going off and made a decision to go back immediately. After one of her Afghan guides wrote a letter enabling her to get a visa, she decided she would just buy a ticket and figure it all out when she got there.

It didn’t take long for word to spread about her innovative teaching methods. Six other schools in Kabul wanted her to teach them almost immediately.

Always an adventurer, Camilla walked all over Kabul to learn about the people and their culture, endearing herself to them and making many connections – even the policemen knew about “Miss Camilla.”

2004
Camilla taught in Afghans4Tomorrow schools and at the Aschiana schools in Kabul.  She also provided teacher training in Ghazni Province at the invitation of the Governor.

She trained 120 teachers during her first teacher training session in Ghazni and made her first contact with beekeepers in Afghanistan, especially important to her because she is beekeeper at home.

2005
While teaching teachers in Ghazni, she met a famous beekeeper who provided her with honey bee frames so she could teach a geometry lesson – why the bees make hexagons instead of circles. it’s all about more volume!

She taught the teachers how to make salve from beeswax, olive oil and local plants during a botany/chemistry lesson. This was the beginning of micro-business opportunities for Afghan women in Ghazni as they began to sell the salve. Camilla encouraged this entrepreneurship and even met with a local factory producer of olive oil and other beekeepers who agreed to participate. Today, there are many thriving entrepreneurs in Ghazni who sell the salve in small brass containers.
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She also taught in Kabul again through the Afghans4Tomorrow organization and at the Aschiana schools.

2006
Although Camilla was determined to go back to Ghazni in 2006, it was too dangerous for her to go there. However, she did get to teach teachers in the Zerak valley as one of the first Westerners to visit the valley, and she continued teaching in Kabul schools sponsored by Afghans4Tomorrow.

2007
Classrooms Across Cultures was founded by Camilla Barry as a 501-C3 nonprofit organization dedicated to helping rebuild educational systems in countries devastated by war, natural or economic disasters by training students and instructors to think critically through hands-on science lessons which use locally-available materials.

2008
Camilla taught in schools in Bamiyan, the Lalander valley schools and in orphanage schools in Kabul.

The Minister of Education met with Camilla after he heard how excited the teachers and students were about her teaching techniques, asking his Deputy Minister to interface with her so she could teach in their newly built Teacher Training Institutes.  She was told that “we can use you right now – please stay.”

The Ghazni Minister of Education came to Kabul and begged for more teaching. The entrepreneurs had run out of salve and had some questions about what plants they could use. Camilla took her and others to a large garden at the lodge where she was staying and talked about each plant that could be used and how to add the oil and wax. “Oh, yes – now we remember!” they said.

However, she had to return home because of a lack of funds and to fulfill her teaching responsibilities in Marin County so she couldn’t participate in the Teacher Training Institutes, but she knew she would be back!

2009
“I think God sent you to me,” Susan Wardak, Afghanistan’s Minister of Teacher Training, said to Camilla as she greeted her in Kabul. The ironic twist to this story is that, although Susan had encouraged Camilla to come back to Afghanistan after being introduced to her and her highly successful hands-on approach of using local materials to teach science in 2008, Camilla had been unable to reach her after that introduction. So, in typical ‘Camilla fashion’, she bought a plane ticket to Afghanistan and, with lots of pluck and prayer, finally found the office of the Ministry of Education. Susan had 350 teachers coming in for teacher training in two weeks and didn’t have a science teacher.

Camilla subsequently spent July and August in Afghanistan, including the period during their national election,  training hundreds of teachers in Kabul (many of whom had traveled from other parts of the country) and in Jalalabad.

During that time, Camilla developed hands-on science lesson plans to complement the Afghan science curriculum. The lessons are being translated into two languages (Pashto and Darsi), with illustrations,  created by a local Afghan illustrator, of the experiments.

2010
Three new members were added to the Board of Directors of Classrooms Across Cultures, providing a strong base of marketing, financial and administrative capabilities. An emphasis is being placed upon expanding awareness of the organization, subsequently increasing the amount of support it can provide in Afghanistan and other countries with similar needs.

Camilla will spend three months in Afghanistan (June-August), training teachers under the auspices of the Ministry of Education.  Her hands-on science curriculum/lesson will be distributed as booklets and videos will be taken of her teaching for later distribution on DVDs to schools throughout Afghanistan.