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Home » ADVOCACY & NETWORKING » Human Rights Alerts

Help AIL to Help Afghan Women and Children in Refugee Camps

October 10, 2001

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), partner organization of Women's Learning Partnership (WLP), reports that since the bombings began in Afghanistan on Sunday, October 7, 2001, the already difficult situation in Afghanistan and in the refugee camps within Pakistan has been deteriorating rapidly. Large numbers of Afghans continue to cross into Pakistan, increasing the number of refugees in the already over-crowded camps.

AIL persists in its efforts to help women and children in the refugee camps even under the present crisis conditions. This week, while the bombings went on, they continued to conduct our joint leadership training workshops as well as their classes for children. In telephone conversations with them today, they spoke of the desperate need for food, medical supplies, and clothing by people throughout the camps including AIL staff and participants who are suddenly faced with caring for newly-arrived family members and compatriots.

Please find below a description of AIL's program to provide direct emergency relief and long-term support to the refugees, as well as information on how to make a contribution to AIL's U.S.-counterpart Creating Hope International.

Thank you,
Women's Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace


EMERGENCY RELIEF FOR AFGHAN REFUGEES

It is estimated that more than 7 million Afghans are refugees within Afghanistan or in neighboring countries. Everyday thousands of Afghans flee across the Afghan border into Pakistan. They urgently need food, shelter, clothing, medical care and schools.

Since September 12, 2001, Creating Hope International (CHI), through its partner, the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) has been providing emergency clothing, medical care and schools for the desperate refugees arriving in the camps in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan.

We need your donations

  • to start more classes for refugee children who have just arrived,
  • to provide health services for newly-arrived women and children, and
  • to provide warm clothing and shoes to the refugees as winter approaches.

Some might ask, "Why start schools?" Let's look at what AIL plans to do. AIL will support each class for 9 months. UNHCR has already promised to give AIL tents, ground covers, blackboards and books for the classes. AIL will hire one teacher for every 30 students. AIL will supervise the classes and it will train the teachers to use interactive, as opposed to rote memorization, teaching techniques. This training will allow the students to learn to think for themselves rather than just blindly follow what they are told to do. The curriculum will include health and human rights education. The students will have something to do…something to look forward to each day. The teachers will have money to support their families (AIL estimates that each teacher will support at least 10 nuclear or extended family members) and to stimulate the Afghan refugee economy by being able to purchase food from the local Afghan shopkeepers in the camps. Education will continue….but in a different way than it was in Afghanistan. Many, many Afghan people will begin to have hope that one day they will have a more normal life in their own country. The cost to provide 9 months of education for each student is $18, and a portion of that cost will be covered by in-kind contributions from UNHCR and the Afghan community. Just think …..for $2 per month or $.10 per school day, you can help a child continue to learn and grow.

AIL, run entirely by Afghan women, is already serving 100,000 women and children in Pakistan and Afghanistan through the following programs:

  • Supporting 74 underground home schools for girls in Afghanistan, 10 primary and secondary schools and 21 pre-schools;
  • Supporting home literacy classes and income generation training projects;
  • Training female teachers (3000 trained to date) and developing teacher training curricula;
  • Providing human rights training for Afghan women, including a human rights resource center;
  • Providing health education and basic health services to 7000 women and children per month; and
  • Providing advanced software and hardware computer training to girls.

Please send your contribution today to:

CREATING HOPE INTERNATIONAL
P.O. BOX 1058
DEARBORN, MI 48121

Creating Hope International is a Michigan non-profit corporation with 501 (c )(3) status. Contributions to Creating Hope International are tax deductible to the full extent of the law.

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