By Emily Will
March 8, 2012
AKRON, Pa. – Despite war’s obstacles and disruptions, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) partners in Afghanistan continue to provide life-enhancing and empowering services to Afghans.
Traumatized women receive counseling. Students learn skills to constructively deal with conflict among their extended families. Malnourished children are fed, and their mothers offered health, nutrition and childcare information.
John and Lynn Williamson, MCC representatives for India, Nepal and Afghanistan, visited Afghan partner agencies in October and reported on the work they observed. The Williamsons are from Akron, Pa., and are based in Kathmandu, Nepal.
“Afghanistan must be one of the most challenging countries in which MCC has program,” the Williamsons wrote. “Land degradation, poor governance, poverty, malnutrition, war, gender inequality – in any category of human development, Afghanistan is struggling. God’s love and compassion is sorely needed here.”
In August 2010, MCC worker Glen Lapp and nine other medical workers were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan’s northeast Badakhshan province. Nevertheless, MCC continues to work with partner organizations and has personnel in Afghanistan. (For security reasons, MCC workers within Afghanistan are not named, nor their work described, in this story.)
Asia director Joe Manickam said the decision to be present is a delicate balance between the importance of standing in solidarity with Afghans as a sign that the world beyond has not forgotten them, and the risks for both MCC workers and the Afghan organizations and people with whom they work. “MCC is called to be a witness of God’s love in Afghanistan and we express this best through people and relationships. We are there by invitation and make our decisions not in isolation, but in partnership. We monitor the situation closely and on an ongoing basis.”
MCC is blessed with partners who are able and willing to show God’s love and compassion to suffering people, John Williamson said.
Peace education for children
In eight middle schools in Paghman District, an outlying area of Kabul, classes of seventh- and eighth-graders role-play or use puppets to enact common daily conflicts, which they afterwards discuss. Sixteen role-plays are contained in a peace education curriculum developed by MCC partner Help the Afghan Children.
“It seemed easy for the students to relate to the stories and to recount similar incidents from their own lives. They all live in extended families and commonly encounter conflicts with parents and other family members,” the Williamsons reported.
Through the lessons, students learn how to apply the principles of listening, understanding, mediation, and respect for elders and for one another in their own conflict management.
MCC’s Global Family education sponsorship program supports Help the Afghan Children’s peace programs and computer and environmental education. These eight schools were chosen because they encourage the attendance of girls. Global Family also supports the effort of another partner, Le Pelican, which provides schooling for children who would otherwise be working, literacy classes for older girls and women, education for people who are deaf and mute and vocational trade classes.
Supporting mothers and children
Under tents in the remote, deforested Badakhshan province, Ruhulla and his wife, Gul, work together to conduct a nutrition clinic. (Their names have been changed.) Ruhulla assesses malnourished infants, measuring weights, heights and arm circumferences. In a nearby tent, Gul checks and counsels pregnant and lactating women.
The couple has been working for nine years with MCC partner Medair, a Swiss faith-based nongovernmental organization. The love and care they demonstrate while working with mothers and children is evident, the Williamsons said.
The need, too, is obvious: “We were told that this area has the highest maternal mortality rates in the world and that 60 percent of babies under 1 year are malnourished,” the Williamsons reported.
At this and three similar Medair treatment centers, staff gave the parents of severely and moderately malnourished infants food supplements provided by the U.N. World Food Programme and UNICEF to feed to their babies at home.
In addition, Medair has educated a core group of seven health promoters, who then meet with women’s care group volunteers who take health, nutrition, and childcare information to more than 5,000 households in the four districts.
MCC’s work with Medair is supported by MCC’s account with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
Trauma healing for women Afsana (not her real name) was forced to separate from her husband, and she and her children had to move out of her in-laws’ home. Instead of having an extended family to rely on, she needed to find food for herself and her children. She told the Williamsons that she became so stressed that she would forget that she put food on the stove, and she beat her children.
The Women’s Activities and Social Services Association (WASSA) chose Afsana as one of 45 women in five districts to participate in a trial women’s trauma-healing project. The project provided individual, monthly counseling to participants who, in addition to experiencing poverty, violence, joblessness and illiteracy, suffered from depression, anxiety, sleep disorders or other symptoms of stress and trauma.
The year-long process focused on listening and building trust with counselor Jamila Sharifi, identifying and prioritizing problems and gradually seeking solutions for their difficulties, starting with the easiest to build self-confidence.
As a result of counseling and medication she received at a different clinic, Afsana told the Williamsons that she no longer beats her children, and she remembers what she’s doing. She reaches out to other women to share what she is learning, despite community leaders who discourage women from meeting.
Sharifi said she believed half of the women have already made significant improvements in their emotional wellbeing. More than half benefit from medication they obtained elsewhere.
WASSA was founded in 2002 by Nilofar Sakhi, a graduate of Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, Harrisonburg, Va. The association works mostly in western Afghanistan to provide women with tools that will allow them to participate fully within Afghan society.
Much more
MCC continues to explore new partnerships and to discuss new projects with existing partners. Training Afghans in peacebuilding will be a significant focus for 2012.