Hope for Afghan Children

After spending a life-changing five months in the Mehan and Sitara orphanages in Kabul, Ian Pounds has been touring the US talking to anyone who’ll listen about the amazing work of Andeisha, Jamshid and everyone at AFCECO. In the process, he has been raising funds to help AFCECO’s work.

The response has been universally positive. Everyone, from 8-year-olds to octogenarians, is eager to learn more about Afghanistan and to hear that not all is doom and gloom for the country and its people.

You’ll find an updated speaking schedule for Ian here on the site. If he’s going to be coming to a town near you, don’t miss this chance to hear him speak. And if your area is not on the speaking schedule, how about approaching a school, college, service organization or other group and organizing a visit by Ian. You’ll find all the details on this page.

There’s about a month to run in the Gadget Drive we’re running to raise funds for a sound system for Mehan Orphanage. So far, we’ve raised $334…hold the presses! make that $578 (I just checked and saw an updated total)… of the $590 needed to buy the sound system. The administration page for the drive indicates we have another $30 in donations pending, which will take us over our target.

This is a great result, and I think we can do further Gadget Drives once we publicise this site widely and have more people involved.

One thing I’ve noticed about the Gadget Drive is there’s no instant gratification. It takes about 10 days from when you send in your donations until they are processed, a value assigned and the money shows up on the Gadget Drive page. It’s a pity, because having a responsive fundraising thermometer encourages others to contribute. I’ll be giving feedback to Gazelle (the company that runs the Gadget Drives) about this.

We plan to create our own donation widgets, which will let us set up special fundraisers, each with its own “thermometer”. That will give us a lot of fundraising flexibility in the future.