Hope for Afghan Children

My apologies for the delay in getting the April and May orphanage newsletters online. They are so full of exciting news about the goings on at the orphanages. If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet, I encourage you to take the time to do so now – it’ll make you feel good all over again about being involved with this remarkable organization and these wonderful children.

• April 2010 Newsletter
• May 2010 Newsletter

I hope you’ve also been keeping up with Ian Pounds’ diary of his experiences as a volunteer in the orphanages. Ian updates his Kabul Journal each week – it usually shows up sometime on Saturday in the USA. Keep your eye out for it and feel free to respond to Ian by adding a comment to any of his posts.

In 2009, Ian Pounds spent five months living and working as a volunteer in Mehan Orphanage in Kabul. It is an experience which affected him deeply. Those of us who followed his weekly journal were moved, educated and inspired. We came away with a much richer understanding of the workings of the orphanages and the world of our sponsored children.

Now, Ian is back in Afghanistan, once again volunteering with AFCECO at the Kabul orphanages. He will continue his journal and we will feature his posts here on Hope for Afghan Children.

I hope you will join those of us who already make it a habit to sit down with a cup of tea or coffee each weekend while we read Ian’s latest installment.

Tonight, Andeisha Farid, the visionary Afghan who founded AFCECO and established the first AFCECO orphanage when she was a youngster herself (20 years old!), will be one of six women to receive a Vital Voices Global Leadership award. The other recipients are Panmela Castro (Brazil), Afnan Al Zayani (Bahrain), Melinda Gates (USA), Rebecca Lolosoli (Kenya) and Roshaneh Zafar (Pakistan).

Many of us who are AFCECO sponsors know Andeisha personally and have witnessed her tireless work on behalf of a new generation of Afghan children. In amongst the hundreds of tasks requiring her attention each day, she still finds time to respond to our emails and build bonds of friendship. We know how richly she deserves this recognition.

We also know she couldn’t have accomplished so much without the unflagging support of her husband, Jamshid, and the others who work each day in the orphanages in Kabul, Jalalabad, Pakistan and – soon – in Herat. Congratulations and thanks to all of you.

We, as sponsors, can take pride in this award, too. It is wonderful to be a small part of such an important venture, one which is at once visionary and practical.

I have no idea how Andeisha, Jamshid and their small crew are keeping up with the workload. Ever since the huge response following NBC’s coverage of the orphanages, everyone at AFCECO has been hard at work making new children welcome, opening new orphanages, working on plans for the future, and attending to an incredible number of daily chores.

The March newsletter is now online and it gives a tip-of-the-iceberg taste of some of the goings-on at the orphanages. A great, quick, informative read.

We’ve started putting the AFCECO newsletters online in PDF format. You’ll find the newsletters on AFCECO’s own website, as well, but they’re so interesting we wanted to make sure as many people as possible get to read them. They’re a wonderful combination of broad vision and intimate details about life in the orphanages. There’s also a Q&A each month, in which Andeisha and Jamshid answer one of the many questions sponsors ask.

If you’re interested in getting others involved and wanting to show how exception and how crucial the AFCECO orphanages are, there’s no better place to start than the February 2010 edition of the newsletter. It provides a striking example of both the breadth of vision for the orphanages and the huge, day-to-day accomplishments achieved so far.