As her classmates look on, a young girl in the village of Bahar-e-Olia completes an art lesson on the white board. CRS organized this class through its Community Based Education program, which launched in Afghanistan in 2006 to make education accessible to Afghanistan’s children, many of whom were cut off by mountainous terrain and poor roads from formal education institutions. Photo by David Snyder for CRS

By David Snyder,

I’m wrapping up five days up here in west-central Afghanistan with CRS, and I have to say it’s been an amazing week. I’ve been to Afghanistan once before but I was only in Kabul. Ghor Province, of which Chakhcharan is the capital, is like a different world.

CRS has been working here since 2006 and much of their programming centers around water and education. From a photographer’s standpoint they are amazing projects to photograph—clear running spring water against a parched and seemingly desolate landscape, and the cherubic faces of Afghan children in dimly lit village classrooms.

But beyond the visual elements of the last few days, the work being done here helps to put Afghanistan in a different context for me. Before this trip I knew only the TV news version—suicide bombings and casualty figures, nightly tragedies that run the risk of inuring us to the plight of human beings in this country.
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“At first the farmers didn’t know about us, or didn’t think we could do it.” Latifa, a widow living in western Afghanistan, is sitting with a group of women in their jam-making shop. “Some of them thought, ‘If we sell our fruits to these women, will we get our money?’”

Rural Afghan women are rarely allowed to leave their homes, much less start a business. But near a town called Herat, many women—especially widows and women with disabled husbands—are in desperate need of income.

Zarifa, a neighbor of Latifa’s, was trying to support her seven children. Her husband, who is handicapped and an opium addict, wouldn’t help. Zarifa and Latifa would occasionally be able to work in their homes, shelling pistachio nuts. “For one day’s work, only shelling the nuts without time to do any housework, we made 30 afs,”says Latifa. “It hurt our hands.”
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CRS helps women’s groups make dresses, jam, and other products. The money they earn helps buy food, clothing, and school supplies for their children. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

“It’s like we were sleeping and now we’ve woken up.”

Rahima, a woman in western Afghanistan, is talking about what it’s like to be able to read: to read a medicine bottle, a sign at a vegetable market, your own name. In Afghanistan, where many men and vast numbers of women are illiterate, learning to read feels life-changing.
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Catholic Relief Services distributes lambs to poor farmers in Afghanistan so they can increase their flocks. CRS gave this family a lamb and provided free veterinary care. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

In the poorest regions of Afghanistan, livestock is like a bank account: if trouble hits, you can sell a sheep, or a goat, or a cow. Not to have an animal is to be exposed, left to the mercy of fate. But families who depend on their livestock too often lose it, or fail to make money from it, because of disease and other problems.
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Bibi Gull lives in a poor village near Herat in Afghanistan. A CRS program trained her in poultry care and gave her several hens and a rooster. She now sells many eggs each month, and uses some of the profits to get medical treatment for her 14-year-old daughter. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

“Once during flood time, my daughter had a seizure and fell in the river,” says Bibi Gull, an Afghan woman whose child is epileptic. “She was wearing red, so we could see her from where we were standing. Her cousins jumped in the river and pulled her out.”

Her daughter, now 14, had gone for years without treatment and fell down often. “It’s dangerous,” says Bibi. But the family had no money for medicine or doctor’s visits. After returning to Afghanistan following years as refugees in Iran, they had to borrow money from neighbors just for the basics.

In their dusty village near the city of Herat, Bibi’s husband worked as a sharecropper. Bibi took care of the house and her 9 children.

Like most of the women in her village, she had no way to earn money.
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Ken Hackett with the leadership of a women’s Food Processing Center in Herat province. Photo by Matt McGarry / CRS Staff

CRS President Ken Hackett is currently traveling in Afghanistan where he’s seen behind the headlines, into the country and its people – a country where something as simple as a book can change lives.

“I have been thoroughly impressed by the vitality of the Afghan people, their ingenuity, their toughness and their desire that there be a better future than what they’ve experienced over the last 30 years.

For example, I met a man who is a leader in his particular village, where he is promoting programs for young girls and women’s education. The man had been a refugee in Iran, and when he came back a few years ago, having spent time during the Soviet occupation in Iran, his village was totally destroyed. He and his neighbors rebuilt the entire village and beautifully crafted homes, walls and compounds. They also beautifully tailored fields of wheat nearby. They worked hard, hoping for a better life for their children, and are doing great things to make that happen. And that was kind of awe-inspiring.
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Please join the next Catholics Confront Global Poverty webcast – Afghanistan: Humanitarian Assistance in the Midst of Conflict this Wednesday November, 11 from 2-3 pm.  Bill O’Keefe – Senior Director of Advocacy at Catholic Relief Services and Virginia Farris – Foreign Policy Advisor at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will discuss:

• The current situation in Afghanistan based on CRS’ on-the-ground presence there;
• The concerns over the role of the U.S. military in the delivery of humanitarian assistance;
• USCCB and CRS’ policy recommendations based on Catholic social teaching and our experience;
• How Catholics in the U.S., through the Catholics Confront Global Poverty initiative, can support long-term stability and development in Afghanistan

RSVP here to join us.

Andrew Schaefer examines vegetables growing on the CRS Ghor compound in Chaghcharan, Afghanistan. The gardens are used as demos to show farmers, and also provide food for CRS employees to eat. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

Catholic Relief Services has always fed hungry people—millions of them, over the years. More than that, we help people feed themselves by improving irrigation, encouraging innovations in farming techniques, and increasing crop yields.

But many people don’t know that, in some countries, CRS feeds its own staff using the same methods we develop with our beneficiaries. In a remote area of Afghanistan, cut off from most outside contact during the winter, vegetables grow in two plastic-sheeted greenhouses and three gardens on the CRS compound. The lettuce, onions, eggplant, squash, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and other vegetables grown there are food for 14 CRS staff people who live on the compound year-round.
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A teacher demonstrates sign language at a school in Kabul run by ANAD, the Afghanistan National Association of the Deaf. Her hands are painted with henna, a traditional decoration. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

“After Chaghcharan, Kabul seems like a metropolis–paved roads!” Dean Carolyn Woo’s first impression of Afghanistan’s capital was understandable
after four days visiting villages reachable mainly by four-wheel drive. But there are plenty of needy people in Kabul, of course, and CRS board member Woo met some of the city’s most vulnerable children on Tuesday.
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CRS board member Carolyn Woo visits women’s self-help groups in Chaghcharan, Afghanistan. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

Taste-testing cookies in remote Afghan towns: such is the life of the globetrotting CRS board member. Last weekend, Dean Carolyn Woo of Notre Dame visited a women’s self-help group in Chaghcharan, Afghanistan, and sampled items from their newly-created bakery. Her verdict: “Delicious.”

In a country where women rarely own property or control household finances, CRS organizes groups of active, entrepreneurial women who want to earn money. CRS encourages the groups—usually made up of 20 women—to pool their savings and develop plans for a small business, like raising chickens or sewing curtains.
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