This study investigates the impact of activities done in the basic education sub-sector by a consortium of four non-government organizations in four provinces in Afghanistan from January 2004 to June 2005. The evaluation uses the project objectives and components as the evaluation framework, and data collected through survey questionnaires, structured interviews and classroom observations. Results indicate that the local communities were actively involved in basic education planning and management via village education committees; where new schools were built, almost all communities contributed labor and/or collected money to pay for the land; most teachers and principals claimed that attending the teacher training workshops enabled them to become more "professional" in teaching; there was a shared concern over the sustainability of the capacity building activities in project management, monitoring and impact assessment. Results show that the ABEC project has undertaken the initial work of building community support for a small number of schools in Afghanistan, and has made a contribution to the improvement of many lives especially in remote rural areas. Future aid projects should be more outcome rather than output oriented; an integrated rather than a federalist consortium could be more effective; teacher training should be upgraded and more systematic; and a mechanism for documentation and dissemination of information is needed for knowledge building and sharing. Appended are: (1) Process of Creating the Evaluation Tools; (2) Criteria for Data Collector Selection; and (3) Statistical Analysis of Change in Attitudes towards Girls over 12 Years Old Attending School.