Author: Jean-Marc

https://www.fedevaco.ch/actus-evenements/actualites/article/prix-diaspora-developpement-2023-2024-une-septieme-edition-qui-se-cloture-dans-un-elan-prometteur

Dear Donors, Donators,

We thank you for your generous contribution to the organization Hope for Afghan Women, a cause that is close to our hearts. Your interest in our organization goes far beyond.

With your continued support, collective efforts and precious gifts, we have worked hard to save the lives of these little Afghan girls.

Thanks to you, we have achieved our goal of preventing them from being sold to older men by their own parents to support their very poor families.

Us Hope for Afghan Women cannot thank you enough for your gesture of kindness and want to make sure that you know how much you have made a difference for our cause.

Today, these girls live in peace and are happy with their families, thanks to your great generosity and donations.

For the holidays, we want to offer you this as a gift.

These three little girls you see in the photos had a very difficult childhood and they almost were sold by their own parents. They did not have the chance to enjoy a normal childhood like going to school or simply having fun.

The one^. on the left is Samira. She is 8 years old and she is the fourth daughter of an extremely poor family who lives in great precariousness. His father is a very depressed person who has been using drugs for years.

Samira almost was sold because her mother could no longer provide for the family following the birth of her 2 other children. Before joining our program, Samira’s mother could no longer feed all her children, so she was forced to haggle over her daughter.

Our association was able to save Samira from the sale and has been supporting her family for several years. We integrated his mother into our financial autonomy program in 2023. Today, she can finally feed her children independently without needing our help, and all this can make a crucial difference in the lives of children.

The little girl in the middle of the photo is called Zarine, she is 9 years old and she is the fifth^. daughter of an extremely poor family. She was almost married to an older man 23 years her senior.

Today, Zarine lives happily with her family thanks to your precious donations. The association also helps its brothers and sisters by contributing to food and rent costs.

Thanks to you, Zarine’s family no longer has to worry about how to pay the household expenses.

This adorable little 11-year-old girl in the last photo also almost was forcibly married to a man 19 years older than her. Her family had even already received the marriage dowry. The association succeeded in convincing the family to repay the dowry, and continues to support the whole family with food aid and rent.

Your generosity has strongly impacted and transformed the lives of these little girls.

Thank you again for the support you have given to all these children; you have brought them back to smile, and they can finally live a happy childhood in peace!

Your support is invaluable for us; thank you very much again!

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I just spent more than a month in Afghanistan, from October 15 to November 25. Since my previous trip in May 2021, things have changed a lot... the Taliban are well in place and women are once again greatly victims of their harsh regime. I feared for my safety throughout the stay and I had to work discreetly to not endanger our beneficiaries as well as my team who works with courage and generosity. Armed Taliban are posted everywhere in the streets and the population is under permanent surveillance.

From this trip, however, I bring back a lot of positives: the families we have supported so far are doing well, some have even become financially independent and were able to leave the association’s aid program! Thanks to this, we were able to absorb some new families. We also received a donation from the organization Uplift Afghanistan, which we allocated to a specific program: providing mobile and fixed stands to several families so that they can generate income by selling food or other items in bazaars (photo). This has always been a key priority for Hope for Afghan Women: enabling our beneficiaries to become financially independent and gradually move away from dependence on men, by achieving a respectable and decent life for themselves and their children.

Thanks to our small community of donors, things are changing and our beneficiaries are extremely grateful. We hope to be able to continue our actions on the ground and for this, we are looking for new sources of income. We need funds for food distributions, which will be necessary with this announced icy winter. Several families have no food to feed their children or heat themselves.

On 15 December 2021, the 7-year-old daughter of a beneficiary of our association received the contents of a huge pot of boiling water on her body while she was warming herself by the stove. She was severely burned and her life was at risk. Our team in Kabul contacted us to ask for help: this little girl was going to die, and no one in Kabul wanted to treat her. We immediately sent funds to have her transferred by car to Peshawar, Pakistan, where she was cared for by doctors from the Peshawar hospital, who treated her for more than three weeks. She is now out of danger... Heartfelt thanks to all the donors who made this possible!