Hope for Afghan Children

In the coming month, each AFCECO sponsor will receive a copy of a new booklet, Parwarishga: A Unique Vision for the Future of Afghanistan, One Child at a Time.

The booklet tells the story of the AFCECO orphanages from inception until the current day. It is filled with photos, a glimpse inside the New Learning Center, descriptions of the special programs run by AFCECO and intimate portraits of some of the orphanage residents.

Share the Parwarishga story

I hope you will treasure the booklet as I know I will. I also encourage you to share it with your family, friends and colleagues, using it as a source of inspiration to entice others to join us in the AFCECO family.

Sponsors are the lifeblood of AFCECO’s work and yet many of the 600 children in the orphanages have no sponsor at all. If each of us could bring just one more sponsor into the fold, it would go a very long way towards ensuring AFCECO’s financial future and the success of this practical vision for a better Afghanistan.

In these hard economic times, it can feel like an imposition to ask others to become sponsors, and yet each of us knows the joy of sponsorship, the delight of receiving an email from a young one who shares a drawing and says “Thank  you for your helping”, the even greater satisfaction of watching that child learn and grow, and the fulfillment that comes from making a real difference in the world. It is not an imposition to wish to share such things; it is a gift.

This booklet is a way to break through any hesitancy or shyness you may feel in sharing your joy in being a member of the AFCECO family. Not only is it a pleasure to read, it also contains a section called “Questions Commonly Asked” with answers to gnarly issues such as “Where does the money go?”, “What happens when the children turn 18?” and “How do you keep the children safe?” On the last page are details on how to join the AFCECO family.

The booklet has been made possible by a grant from USAID. I hope you enjoy your copy and please let me know if you have suggestions for making future versions of the booklet even better. I’ll pass your suggestions on to Andeisha, Jamshid and Ian in Kabul.

Your sister sponsor,
Rose Vines
(sponsor of Farzana, Sara, Madina and Jamshid)

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Tonight’s “Making a Difference” segment on NBC Nightly News featured a visit by Brian Williams to Mehan Orphanage. There he interviewed Andeisha Farid, the orphanage director, and filmed some of the children.

We’re hoping this segment will encourage more people to sponsor children and support AFCECO’s exceptional work.

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Ian Pounds, who spent five months in the orphanages in Kabul and who is now touring the USA talking about the work done by AFCECO, has decided to continue writing about his experiences.

This is welcome news to all of us who followed along as he wrote while in Afghanistan. This is not your average blog. Ian is a writer and a thinker, and his journal gave all of us plenty to chew on as well as glimpses of the heartache, beauty and hope in which he was immersed.

I encourage you to check Ian’s journal for updates each weekend. You’ll find plenty to inspire you and to spark ideas about new ways to help the children.

- Rose

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Hope for Afghan Children is now tweeting using the name afghankids. We’ll use Twitter to update you about this site, about events at the AFCECO orphanages and news from Afghanistan.

We’ll also be using Twitter to follow other organizations providing information about Afghanistan or doing good work for Afghan people, such as Vets for Afghanistan (vets4afstan).

If you’re not familiar with using Twitter or not sure how to make it useful for you, one of the best ways to improve the signal-to-noise ratio is to use Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck is a program which lets you follow different conversation streams on Twitter with ease. Using Tweetdeck, it’s easy, for example, to focus on Afghan issues and tune out other stuff.

To use Tweetdeck:

1. Create a Twitter account if you don’t already have one.
2. Download and install Tweetdeck. It requires Adobe Air to run, which will be installed automatically.
3. Launch Tweetdeck, go through the setup procedure, and then click the Twitter Search icon (the magnifying glass) near the top left.
4. Type a search phrase such as afghan OR afghanistan and press Enter. Or you might try #afghan OR afghankids OR afceco. Note that many people use the #afghan tag to mark tweets that pertain to Afghanistan. Using “OR” in your search phrases expands the scope of your search. So, for example a search for afghankids afceco will find only those tweets that refer to both afghankids and afceco; a search for afghankids OR afceco finds tweets that refer to either afghankids or to afceco or to both.
5. Tweetdeck will display a new column displaying tweets that match your search phrase. Now you can easily track tweets that are relevant.

If you’d prefer to handpick a specific group of twitterers to focus on, use Tweetdeck’s Group search (it’s the icon displaying two people). You’ll see a list of all the people you’re following on Twitter and you can select those you’d like to focus on.

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We’re ready to rock and roll with the site.

I’ve redone or updated most of the content, with the exception of the section on the street children of Kabul, which features Jamshid’s photos. That will come soon. We’re also waiting for CharityHelp’s programmer to create our specialised donation widget. Once it’s ready, we’ll be able to set up special fundraisers and provide a donate button on our site or any other site that wants to get involved, such as Vets for Afghanistan. Each donation button will feature a fundraising thermometer, so we’ll be to see how we’re progressing towards each goal.

At this stage, I want to encourage our small band of Facebook activists to register for the forums (thanks to Kristen for getting in early on this), contribute to the discussion, and put a hands up if you have anything to contribute to this blog. Blog items can be short – a few paragraphs – or moderately lengthy. Or they might simply be photos with captions. Topics can include background info about Afghanistan or reports of trips/experiences there; our orphanages; sponsoring; fundraising. Anything that furthers our goals of supporting AFCECO; making life better for all Afghans, especially the children; and building a useful network for sponsors.

Once we have a core group here, then it’ll be time to really launch the site. Stephanie from CharityHelp has offered to help us with this, and I’m gathering a list of Afghan-related sites we can contact. We’ll also want to tweet and Facebook about it. If you have any suggestions for publicising the launch, please let me know. You can either respond to this post or post in the discussion groups.

I’m very keen to make this an international site, so let’s do what we can to encourage non-US sponsors to get involved.

Rose

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