Hope for Afghan Children

My name is Kristen L. Rouse and I live in Brooklyn, New York.  I have sponsored a child through CharityHelp/AFCECO since the fall of 2006, which was the middle of my 12-month long deployment to Afghanistan as a soldier in the U.S. Army. 

I was proud to serve my country in a place where such a large part of our mission was helping local Afghans rebuild and move on with their lives, but it very soon became clear to me that there was such a vast need, and we had such limited resources at the time I was there.  My primary job was to supply medics and health care providers at the American hospital at Bagram Airfield, but I also assisted with supplying our taskforce partners at the humanitarian hospitals run by the Egyptian Army and the Korean Army who combined saw over 500 Afghan patients every day.  Afghan men, women, and children would come from miles away for medical care.  I once saw a young man bring in an elderly man to the Egyptian hospital in a wheelbarrow.  Another man carried his mother in on his back.  And children were everywhere – as medical patients, as beggars or clever hucksters outside the front gate, or as laborers — and not in school as I thought they should be. 

Afghanistan continues to be plagued by conflict, crime, and dire poverty.  But the breathtakingly beautiful landscape of the rugged brown Hindu Kush mountains, the lush green fields and angular mud-brick villages dotting the river valleys, and the dusty plains where I first saw camels lumbering by in their natural habitat.  And the smiling warmth and generosity of the everyday Afghan people I met, despite all they've endured, and despite all that they lack — well, all of this made a profound impression on me.  I wanted to do something that would make a lasting, positive change there.  One thing I discovered I could do as an individual of modest means was to sponsor a child through the AFCECO orphanage program.

The future of Afghanistan is its children.  Society there has been so disrupted by decades of brutal war; families and communities have been torn apart, and for thirty years now it has been an extreme challenge just for children to be educated in the basics of reading and writing in their own language.  Children need and deserve a safe place to live, sanitary conditions, basic health care, nutritious food, and caring people who can help them learn how to grow up into strong men and women, prepared to be citizens in a modern world.  That is such a daunting challenge in Afghanistan right now.  But AFCECO is actually doing it.  And with more funding from those of us who do have resources — even modest ones — we can help AFCECO reach even more children. 

The organization I've founded, Veterans for Afghanistan, is proud to partner with Hope for Afghan Chidren in support of the amazing work that AFCECO does.  Regardless of how you feel about the current conflict, I think we all can agree that the time is now for each one of us to do something to help Afghanistan.  By supporting AFCECO, we are making a powerful and profound investment in an independent and peaceful future Afghanistan.  These children will indeed be Afghanistan's future.  And from what I've seen of all that AFCECO is able to do despite the surrounding challenges — that future is a bright one. 

Won't you join us?