FILE: Kabul, Afghanistan - Date Unknown (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
1. Plane flying over city
2. Pedestrians

Kabul, Afghanistan - Recent (CGTN - No access Chinese mainland)
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Rangina Hamidi, Afghanistan's Minister of Education (starting with shot 2/partially overlaid with shot 4):
"The best tool we could use, not only to empower women, but to also enable them to use this tool for the rest of their lives and then their children's lives to achieve anything and everything that they want in life. And without education, they are not going to be able to do that. A lot of the country remains with no access to schools. And in a particularly patriarchal, conservative country like Afghanistan, many of the village-level people or people working at the district levels, they still haven't seen the value of education in their children's lives, to be able to want to invest in sending their kids to school. So we have learned at the Ministry of Education is [that] instead of asking children to come to schools to get educated, we've created alternative ways of making education accessible even in their communities and villages. The idea is to enable children to get access to education no matter where they are, whether they are in their home, in their community mosque, in a community center, or a school - if they are lucky to have a school."
++SHOT OVERLAYING SOUNDBITE++
4. Various of reporter
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FILE: Kabul, Afghanistan - Date Unknown (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
5. Street scenes

Kabul, Afghanistan - Recent (CGTN - No access Chinese mainland)
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Rangina Hamidi, Afghanistan's Minister of Education (partially overlaid with shot 7):
"To be honest I am not worried. I am a believer that again in the past 20 years we've created a population of citizens, leaders, both men and women, who see Afghanistan in a different light than where Afghanistan was 20 years ago. This peace deal was inevitable. This was coming. We knew it. It's not a surprise to the Afghan country and population. And we are hopeful that if the right subjects are discussed during the peace agreement, I'm hopeful that we Afghans can create a different future for us. We have no other option. We have to make whatever we have in our hand work for us, because we will remain a nation regardless of whether the international troops remain or not."
++SHOT OVERLAYING SOUNDBITE++
7. Various of reporter
++SHOT OVERLAYING SOUNDBITE++

FILE: Kabul, Afghanistan - Date Unknown (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
8. Pedestrians, cyclists on street, neighborhood on hill

Kabul, Afghanistan - Recent (CGTN - No access Chinese mainland)
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Rangina Hamidi, Afghanistan's Minister of Education:
"Trust is a very, very difficult commodity or value. I like to believe that I want to trust everybody but trust cannot be simply gained by word of mouth. You have to show it in action."

FILE: Kabul, Afghanistan - Date Unknown (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
10. Traffic, pedestrians on street

Afghanistan's first female Minister of Education in three decades, Rangina Hamidi, expressed optimism about the future of women and girls in Afghanistan, as the government seeks to strike a peace deal with the Taliban.

In a recent interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), Hamidi stressed the paramount importance of education to improving the status of Afghan women.

"The best tool we could use, not only to empower women, but to also enable them to use this tool for the rest of their lives and then their children's lives to achieve anything and everything that they want in life. And without education, they are not going to be able to do that. A lot of the country remains with no access to schools. And in a particularly patriarchal, conservative country like Afghanistan, many of the village-level people or people working at the district levels, they still haven't seen the value of education in their children's lives, to be able to want to invest in sending their kids to school," she said.

"So we have learned at the Ministry of Education is [that] instead of asking children to come to schools to get educated, we've created alternative ways of making education accessible even in their communities and villages. The idea is to enable children to get access to education no matter where they are, whether they are in their home, in their community mosque, in a community center, or a school - if they are lucky to have a school," added the Education Minister.

Although the Afghan government has entered peace talks with the Taliban and the U.S. is expected to finish pulling out its troops by September, Hamidi is not too concerned that these latest developments might reverse the country's progress in areas such as women's rights.

"To be honest I am not worried. I am a believer that again in the past 20 years we've created a population of citizens, leaders, both men and women, who see Afghanistan in a different light than where Afghanistan was 20 years ago. This peace deal was inevitable. This was coming. We knew it. It's not a surprise to the Afghan country and population. And we are hopeful that if the right subjects are discussed during the peace agreement, I'm hopeful that we Afghans can create a different future for us. We have no other option. We have to make whatever we have in our hand work for us, because we will remain a nation regardless of whether the international troops remain or not," said Hamidi.

While the Taliban seems to have voiced a willingness to compromise, Hamidi said actions speak louder than words.

"Trust is a very, very difficult commodity or value. I like to believe that I want to trust everybody but trust cannot be simply gained by word of mouth. You have to show it in action," said the Education Minister.