Generosity Magnified Eight Times

TEAM KARADAH CHALLENGE: Make $2,500 become $20,000

Temporary internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, too often, become permanent places of poverty and hopelessness. Imagine, if you will, being driven from your home and all that is familiar to you. You are then corralled into hastily constructed camps; nothing more than mud huts and tents. These structures are then filled with families — fathers, mothers, children, and extended family. An economy of sorts will disrupt some of the monotony of your new existence, but mostly it will be filled with worries about what the future holds for you and your family. Will circumstances allow you to return to your home? Will your home be there when you return? Will your children ever know the normal life you had before; the life that seems increasingly distant with each passing day? These are compelling questions of substance and not exercises in intellectual what ifs.

Maslakh Internally Displaced Persons Camp; Herat, Afghanistan

Imagine, now, you are a single mother with all of the responsibilities of caring for and supporting your family. You may be a widow. Your husband may be disabled and unable to work. Perhaps, your husband has abandoned you. In these austere environments, you will be particularly vulnerable. You will have little access to the life-changing advantages of education, healthcare, and basic needs. Where will you turn?

We must be careful that news of the refugees’ plight does not somehow become commonplace when the initial shock wears off and yet the wars continue and the families keep coming. Millions of refugees worldwide, whose stories no longer make the news, are still in desperate need of help.

-Patrick Kearon

For the poor mothers living in the wind-swept Maslakh IDP camp outside Herat, Afghanistan these questions are ever-present. Home to over 150,000 displaced Afghans, Maslakh is the largest such camp in Afghanistan. Established in 1992, Maslakh is a camp of mud huts and tents in the shadow of the Afghan mountains. The camp has limited opportunities, especially for women.

Because of these progress-impeding challenges, the Herat-based and Afghan-founded nonprofit Women’s Education for a Better Tomorrow (WEBT) is stepping up to provide 100 of these vulnerable women with critical and marketable vocational skills, business training, and post-training assistance in setting up small businesses. The training will also include information about gender-specific legal rights and sources of support when those rights are violated.

WEBT has received a grant of over $20,000 from the World Food Program, the United Nation’s food aid organization, to provide food vouchers for the women and their families while they are being trained. This support will allow the women to focus on their training, knowing their families’ food needs are being met.

Afghan-founded Women’s Education for a Better Tomorrow’s winter clothing distribution at Maslakh camp

Karadah Project International, the nonprofit I founded to continue supporting peace and stability efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, is supporting these efforts by raising the $2,500 match required for the WFP grant. Without this match, WEBT will lose the food support from the World Food Program.

We hope you will support us in giving these vulnerable women an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.

Click on the link below to support Afghan women:

www.karadahproject.com

Then click on this icon:

Thank You!

Rick

LTC (retired) Rick Burns is founder and president of The Karadah Project International, an Iowa 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation supporting peace and stability efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a proud member of the Council Bluffs Iowa Sister Cities International Board of Directors, US Global Leadership Coalition — Iowa Advisory Committee, Atlantic Iowa Rotary Club, Elk Horn Iowa American Legion, Lansing Kansas Kiwanis, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and founding member of Soccer Salam, a partnership of veteran-led nonprofits supporting displaced Iraqi families; all organizations making positive and significant impacts on the world.

Karadah Project International

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Veteran-founded nonprofit building sustainable and long-term solutions in partnership with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan from the heart of the Midwest

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