Every week we go to Linda’s grave with some flowers. Linda is buried alongside the grave of my parents in a lovely graveyard overlooking one of the most beautiful beaches in Scotland.
Every week of 2011, I’ve looked up and seen my parent’s gravestone and been reminded that my mum died in 2008, my dad in 2009 and my daughter in 2010. I just wanted to get to the end of 2011 with the rest of my family intact; and we did. And I’m grateful.
One of the best things about running a small charity is that we can make quick decisions about what to fund and what to pass by. It’s great not being constrained by policies and bureaucracies, structure plans and mission statements, and all that corporate stuff.
Funding lunches
In January the Foundation funded lunches for Afghan kids attending an out of school hours circus school. They learn juggling (which Linda was quite good at, incidentally), acrobatics, theatre and magic tricks. They do performances all over the country and even abroad in Italy, Denmark and Japan.
Lunchtime meals provide much-needed sustenance for poorer children in a country where malnutrition is much more prevalent than we think. But more than that, this school provides relief and some brightness in a world where optimism must appear misplaced at times, and deserves supporting just for that. And it’s run by Afghans along with one westerner.
We made this happen with money from you. And it’s this that is the buzz.
December’s project was entirely different. We funded an emergency shipment to a state-run orphanage in the north east of the country – mattresses, blankets, warm clothing, food, firewood. It can be really cold in this area during the winter, well below freezing, and some of the children didn’t have any shoes, let alone socks.
The problem is that the funds that the government allocates disappear into officials’ pockets all the way along the line and so there isn’t enough to feed the children at the sharp end. We understand that there was an orphanage visited a few years back where the daily food ration was six beans per child per day.
Managing money
So we also funded travel costs for the government official responsible for orphanages, Sayed Abdullah Hashemi, to visit the north east. This is something that hasn’t happened within the last five years so far as our partner NGO knows.
The official was an orphan himself and has done some good work over the past year improving management of the orphanages in Kabul. And he confronted the management at the institutions and organised independent reporting chains so that he can keep up to date with the situation at the orphanage. Without this, the mattresses would likely have been sold and the food taken home to feed employees’ families.
There was an article about this in the New York Times and the government has taken steps to improve matters, but there’s a long road to travel. Nor do we want the Afghans to change overmuch – but please, let’s have the orphans with shoes and socks and a mattress each to lie on and a blanket.
We made this happen with money from you. And it’s this that is the buzz.
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