2007 10 newsletter

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Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Support for AfghanistanKarte Sa-e Pule Surkh of Kabul P.O. Box 3149 Kabul, Afghanistan

Email [email protected] or [email protected]

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September 23, 2007Dear Friends of PARSA in Afghanistan;I have a newsletter that I write to our international supporters that focuses on explainingour life and work here in such a way that they feel connected. I realized this month that Ineed to write a completely different letter to our partners and supporters in Afghanistanto update you on the results of the social action initiative in the orphanages we started

this spring as well as to acknowledge the work of other organizations in our network.

As most of you know I grew up here in the 60s living withmy family in Karte Se. It was a very different time but theexperience of living in Afghanistan-the unpredictability, thehighs and lows, the frustration and exhilaration seem thesame to me. My parents made a good life for us as childrenby belonging to a community of friends and colleagues whowere creative and active in creating a sense of normalcy toour lives and who viewed life here with a sense of humor. Inthe 60s and 70s there was little to offer except

entertainment of our own making, long trips in the country,lengthy and heated Monopoly marathons, communitytheater, horseback riding, dances, festivals etc Today,security constraints and the demand of seven-day workweeks, international friends with short-term contracts, andthe difficulty of living curtail our ability to develop ahealthy, supportive community here. But as my husband and I head into our third year

living in Kabul, and we are beginning to be calledold timers, I am struck by a need to connect andcreate a community that supports the unique needsof our development workers.

When we were working in the Alluhoddinorphanage this year, and I needed to reach out toother agencies for support to get the children caredfor, I had a remarkable response from through outthe country. We now have an informal network ofpeople exchanging ideas, keeping each other

PARSADiscovering the Afghan SpiritPhysiotherapy and Rehabilitation Services for Afghanistan

60s in Kabul with mymother and sister, Fran on the

Christmas in Kabul, 1964..with my sisters.

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informed and requesting support. I chastised myself for not reaching out to ourdevelopment community earlier in my work with the children. We are now joining themore formal networks, such as the Child Protection Action Network but I also now havea lively, passionate connection to people around the country who are working in smalland large ways to alleviate the suffering of children here. I believe that fostering this kind

of a community in all areas of our work will help us lift the fatigue that comes withworking here. Also, we are beginning to see small efforts to initiate activities that supportus such as yoga, mediation, a poetry reading circle, counseling and support groups thatstart to help us make sense out of our life in Afghanistan. (Please e-mail me if you havesuch an activity going that you would like others to join so I can help promote these kindsof efforts.) So, in short, in spite of the security situation, kidnappings and bombings,there are many people here that are just continuing their work, avoiding speculation ofAfghanistans downfall and attending to the task of rebuilding the country. To all of youwho count yourself in that categoryLets stay connected.

To all warm regards and best wishes.

Marnie GustavsonExecutive DirectorPARSA

Update on PARSA activities in Kabul:This year we expanded our activities to include working with the government to bringchange to social protection programs such as the Marastoon with Afghan Red Crescent,and the national orphanages with the Ministry of Social Affairs.

The National Orphanages:PARSA, in partnership with Afghan community leaders -Mahbouba Seraj, MaryamGailani, and Seema Ghani, and activist, Mrs. Carolyn Firestone, reported to thegovernment intolerable conditions in Alluhoddin orphanage this year. Vice President,Khalily, and other officialsvisited the orphanage and havebeen working to change,systemically the care for 8,000children in the nationalorphanage. As with all workwith the Afghan government,issues are complicated, and

political.

Afghan Independent HumanRights is completing a report on thecondition of the orphanagesaround the country to bring to theMinistry of Social Affairs for action. Deputy Minister, Waisal Noori, recently met with

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PARSA and reinstated our protocol (suspended during our advocacy activities) so thatwe can work in the orphanages again, which we started this week. He has invited us tojoin CPAN as well. We deeply appreciate his cooperation and support and look forwardto improvements in the national orphanages. In addition to this I just visited theAlluhoddin Orphanage and the conditions there have vastly improved. We congratulate

the Ministry, and Vice President, Khalily for this improvement. Whereas there is stillstructural needs to be improved, the children have uniforms, jackets and shoes and theenvironment is much better. We look forward to working with the Ministry on improvingall national orphanages this year and to systematizing the monitoring and responsesystem.

Winter drive for clothing, blankets, and suppl ies for theorphans in national orphanages:When PARSA visited the Tahia e Maskan Orphanage last week in preparation forstarting our Healthy Child program our program director, Atiqullah Kohistani sent methe following comments:

On Sunday 07 October 200, we gone through their rooms, they really lives in very bad

condition, worse than Alluhoddin .the following things we notice which really emergency

needs for those poor boys are:

1- The shape of the building is shadow and the rooms are very cold, most of thewindow doesnt have glasses.

2- The rooms needs painting, the doors are damage.3- The children needs warm clothes recently they dont have suitable dress.

4- The toilet the have are not clean and active.

So as we see its better to prepare the environment before we start any kind of training or

activities and the first priority is to fix their windows glasses.

So, we are initiating a winter drive for helping the children through winter. To avoid thedifficulties we encountered last year with orphanage staff taking goods designated for thechildren for personal use we have set up the following informal system of monitoring.

PARSA will work with donors in Kabul orphanages of Taiman Maska and Alluhoddin,and the Bamyan city orphanage to assess the winter needs and distribute goods. PARSA

is working in these orphanages and will monitor that the children receive the clothing andblankets and will check up on this in weeks after the distribution. (E-mail Atiqullah if youhave any way to make a contribution to this at [email protected])

Mahbouba Seraj has agreed to assist and monitor the orphanage in Jalalabad. She canbe reached at [email protected].

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Deputy Minister Waisal Noori has personally agreed to address any complaints that thedonor community may have about donations not getting to the orphans and PARSA willbe reporting to him for these orphanages.

If you are an agency that can monitor donations in other parts of the country please

let me know that you are willing to oversee distribution of needed donations. If youare an agency that has specific requests for help in other parts of the country send mea list of needs that the orphans have for winter and location.

If you live in the US and want to participate in this drive please contact Betty Tisdale,founder of Helping and Loving Orphans (HALO) atwww.bettytisdale.com. Betty has

spent the last week in Kabul andBamyanorphanages and isheading up a drive to supportnational orphanages inAfghanistan. Her website is and

her email [email protected]. Wedeeply appreciate her work.Betty is a staunch 85 years oldand visited us only because ofher deep dedication to learninghow to support these children.

Afghan Red Crescent Society and the MarastoonPARSA moved to Kabuls Marastoon (meaning the place that gives help to disabled,widows, homeless, and mentally ill) five months ago, and we have been working withARCS directors and staff to improve the programs at Marastoon. ARCS President,Fatima Gailani, once told me that the reason she wanted to work with Afghan RedCrescent was to help the people who lived in ARCS five Marastoons, especially thementally ill. She has declared this year the year of the Marastoons and PARSA isprivileged to be part of the first stages of reorganization and implementation of the ARCSstrategic plan for national Marastoons, in partnership with Taib Amin, National Directorof Marastoons. He can be reached [email protected] for more information aboutARCS programs.

One program that has begun to produce results is work that my husband, Dr. NormGustavson, medical anthropologist and psychologist has initiated with the two asylumsfor the mentally ill. He has been working in close partnership with Dr. Homayra, andPARSA case manager, Sahela Yasin, to treat the patients in the asylums. Results havebeen quite remarkable and we look forward to developing activities programs for patientswho are showing signs of rehabilitation. E-mail Norm for more information about thisprogram at [email protected].

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Our Contributors and Volunteers in KabulKabul is not the first place that an executive director looks for donor support, as thebusiness community tends to be wary of giving because it can be difficult to know wherethe donations are being spent.

But we have been deeplygratified by the generous supportof two businesses that havebecome involved in supportingour programs for orphans. TheJubaili Brothers and theSpringfield Restaurant have notonly sponsored children in ourHealthy Child programs buthave had people in theirbusinesses corresponding with

the children. These twobusinesses are taking the lead inthe Kabul community andbecoming involved and invested in helping.

In addition to this we have a fledgling volunteer program for people who would like tocome to Marastoon and be with the children for a couple of hours. Contact MollyHowitt, PARSA Child Specialist, for any more details about these programs. She can bereached at [email protected].

Notes for our friends in the US:I returned from the US three weeks ago to our new room in Marastoon-we call the

building the Old House. We spent the summerrenovating this building for a guesthouse forPARSA volunteers and staff. Our first delegates,Gennaro Buonocore, Dr. Kelly Bender, MariaDelongy and George MacDonaldfrom Phoenix

had to accommodate the construction workersshowing up every morning, no windows, thickdust, and my animals getting adjusted to their new

home. The

kitchen sinkseemed to be on its own schedule for completion andday by day a new piece was added until we have theequivalent of a summer camp kitchen where the

process seemsstalled but Iam quite George with the head of shura in a Paghman village

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ia and Kelly tryingto figure out the washing machine

happy to have running water. George found himself in the new bathroom, with anaudience peering in the non-existent windows. Kelly, ambivalent about cats, woke up

with a small Afghan cat curled up by his side. The cat and his owner, Bismullah hadbeen displaced by our arrival and moved on up the hill but the cat is having a hardtime adjusting.

Our volunteers were gracious, interested and flexible. Touring them around ourprojects and including them in our work gave me a good perspective on how PARSAhas developed and a good sense of how we want to grow. Having them live atMarastoon with us let them experience the lives of vulnerable Afghans first hand andthey will be informed and educated advocates when they return home. Althoughsecurity was a concern and we were cautious, I enjoyed watching them immerse

themselves in the experience of just getting through a day in Afghanistan.

As a part of our trip we traveled up to Bamyan, a ten-hourtrip over abysmal roads to everyones discomfort. I lost a

certain amount of credibility by insisting that Bamyan wasquite close for about four hours of the trip. After the second day of misguessing thedistances I was lucky anyone would get in the car with me. A beautiful day at Band-i-amir lakes, and breathtaking trip up the Jawzjareen valley compensated for thediscomfort a bit.

I had the opportunity work on our strategic plan with Gennaro, our Chairman of theboard while they were here and he is supporting me to fundraise effectively for thenext three months so that I am able to focus and refine programs next year. Ourpartnership with Afghan RedCrescent Society has the potential of

redefining social protectionprograms and long-termrehabilitation in Afghanistan,especially for the mentally ill and

mentally retarded. Our Earlychildhood programs are some of the bestin the country. The community villageschool in Hazarajat has the

potential of transforming thatcommunity and providing an excellent model for remote rural education programs.

So, it is time for us to fundraise for the year 2008. To this end, I will be back in theUnited States in November in two cities, Seattle and Phoenix for fundraising events.

We have a great grassroots funding community and I work hard to maintain personalcontact with everyone. I would like to expand it so that we raise our basic operating

budget for the year of 2008 that is $332,000, which will serve over 3,000 vulnerablepeople in a variety of programs.

Swimmin in Band-i-amir

eorge with Bismullah and Ali, residents ofarastoon.

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More importantly it will allow us to pilot a numberof programs as models for caring for vulnerable

populations, including Life skills and jobplacement for disabled people, A Safe Place for mentally ill with the possibility of

instituted individuals being reintegrated into their family. Vulnerable Childrensprograms that help professionals identify and work with learning disabilities anddevelopmental problems, and our Community Village Schools, which combine earlychildhood programs with adult literacy to elevate the education level of the entirecommunity to provide a richer environment for rural Afghan children to grow up in.

I thank all of the people who helped me with the small fundraiser in Seattle and lookforward to seeing you in November.

With deepest appreciation,

Marnie Gustavson

Notes PARSA Programs.When I was in the US we received the following email from Yasin, our national Afghan

director about the progress ofour patients in the womensmental asylum Good news to

Dr. Norman,Since two weeks the female crazywomen are knowing vegetables andthey are asking Saleha to bringthem. Before just they were eating

rice, bread and some time meat, andjust when they were out they wereeating alfalfa. Now they areasking Onions, Tomatoes and othervegetablesNow, we do have to work onpolitically correct terminology

for our mentally ill clients, but the event of having our female patients prefer cookedvegetables over grazing in the alfalfa fields has given our Afghan staff an enormous senseof accomplishment. The five women in the picture were invited to Sahelas (our social

worker) sons birthday party. I had the privilege of watching them dance and sing tomusic and to see their sense of awe that they experienced by being part of somethingnormal. We have some miracles now after two months of treatment. As Sahela says,they are remembering their historybefore their treatment they could only babble.

Dr. Homayra, Sahela and myself with five women from the womens asylum

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Safeullah AmarkhelPARSAs newassistant director of well being programs,began a mobility training program thismonth with 12 blind residents ofMarastoon. He is training Sahela to workwith the blind women. He found canes forthem all in the bazaar, and for $150, andnow when I take my walk in the evening Isee a large number of them out for a strollwith there new canes One father was carrying his son as he felt his way along the road

with his cane. Such a pleasure to watch our staff work so competently with the disabled.

In Bamyan Taher and Zahra have taken up residence in our offices with their children.They are just about to become parents to their fourth child. Zahra is a skilled projectmanager and artisan and will be managing and training the women in our economicprograms. Taher will function as a liaison between villages and operations managers.

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Together they make $300 a month. We are so lucky to have this well trained couple tostart our project in Jawzjareen ValleyEvents and Announcements

Seattle EventFundraising Event for PARSA

November 10th, 5-8pmUniversity Heights community Center

Meet our Afghan DirectorsOur Face to Face with Afghanistan was a success this August in that I was able to meetour donors and have a candid conversation about our work in Afghanistan. InNovember, four of our Afghan directors will be joining me from Kabul for their first tripto the US. Please mark your calendar and plan on joining us. For more details call oremail Colin Hume at 360-319-4727 or [email protected].

Phoenix EventsOctober 30th through November 6th

We just had a visit from delegates from the Phoenix area headed by our chairman of theboard, Gennaro Buonocore, including members of the Paradise Valley MethodistChurch. I will be joining them with our four Afghan directors, for a series of forums andfundraising events during this week, to share our experiences of Afghanistan. Pleasecontact Maria Delong at [email protected] or George Macdonald [email protected] for more details and the schedule.

New York CityA Photo exhibition by Andy Xenios

Including photos from Andys visit with PARSA staff to Alluhoddin OrphanagePaley Center for Media in New York City,October 23rd and ending December 31st.

The theme of the exhibition is: Documenting change in Afghan society with a specialemphasis on media and women. There are portraits of children who are in theAlluhoddin orphanage that Andy visited while he was with PARSA in Kabul.Creative Visions Foundation and Caroline Firestones foundation, New HudsonFoundation, are sponsoring the exhibition. Andy Xenios has offered to donate a portionof any photograph that he sells at the exhibition to PARSA and the Paley Center.

Dr. Nassim Assefi, lived in Afghanistan for two years developing training programs forAfghan physicians, has completed her first novel,Aria, and will be donating a portion ofthe proceeds from her novel to PARSA. A fluent Farsi speaker her book is informed byher experience as an Iranian woman, and is a heartfelt statement about life in this part ofthe world. You can purchase her book atwww.amazon.com.

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The Kabul Beauty School, written byDebbie Rodriquez and Kristin Ohlson is aboutDebbies experiences in Afghanistan in the years just after the Taliban fell, as she workedto develop training programs for Afghan women to learn cosmetology. Mary MacMakin,founder of PARSA was involved in the start up of the first beauty school. Currently amovie is in the works, and Debbie has approached PARSA about assisting with the

continuation of the Kabul Beauty School in the future. This book can be found atwww.amazon.com.

Our son, Colin Hume visited my husband and I this spring and we hope that he will bejoining us again at the end of November. He wrote a candid journal about his visit thatwe have posted at:http://www.afghanistanparsa.org/content/colins_journal.htmforthose of you who have not had the opportunity to read it.

To our Donors from the Chairman of the BoardDear Friend of PARSA,It is with great pleasure that I present to you a formidable humanitarian endeavor:

PARSA, Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Services for Afghanistan.

I have been lucky to serve with this famed Afghanistan based Non GovernmentOrganization since April 2006 and I have witnessed the amazing progress that itsdedicated personnel has achieved in the name of charity, love and freedom from fear.

PARSA is not only a jewel in the desperate scenario of one of the countries most affectedby conflict in the past century but also the symbol of Afghan resilience, generosity andspirit.

In the past twelve month the organization has experienced a strategic managerial changefrom the legendary founder Mary MacMakin to a new professional structure that meetsthe standards of the most exigent international donors.

It now reaches and caters for more needy Afghans than ever before. Its interventionmode has appropriately switched from an emergency one to a developmentally

reconstructive model. It follows coherently the developments within its beloved country.

When asked about what the solution to Afghanistans long lasting drama I mention twovital factors: Education and the Afghans willingness to make a Positive Difference.

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And the Difference is PARSA.

On behalf of the neediest people ofAfghanistan I thank you for your

interest and support.

Gennaro BuonocoreChairman of the Board ofDirectorsPARSAKabul - Afghanistan

To Donate to PARSA send aCheck to:PARSA

3246 39th Avenue SW

Seattle, WA 98116

Or go online to our website at: www.afghanistan-parsa.org. Thank you!

Gennaro visitin a resident famil at Marastoon.

2007 10 newsletter

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