Director Dina Fesler’s mission to Afghanistan last month was to continue developing the U.S./Afghan Junior Investor Program, an interactive curriculum aimed at helping American and Afghan students support one another’s education. However, after visiting the squalid Charahee Qambar IDP (internally displaced persons…or refugees who haven’t crossed an international border) camp and discovering over 700 families living in freezing conditions unfit for human existance, including thousands of children without warm clothes and most suffering from pneumonia, she quickly realized she had a second mission to conduct as well.
Most of the families in this camp fled from Helmand Province where coalition forces have been aggressively hunting Taliban, and causing a lot of collateral damage in the process. With their homes bombed and burned, and many family members killed, these people packed what little they had left and came to Kabul for safety. Unfortunately, Dina discovered that Kabul provided little else and they now live in a makeshift camp built out of mud where children play amongst garbage, open sewage and roaming wild dogs.
During her first visit, Dina discovered many sick children, some missing limbs as a result of the bombing going on in Helmand, but the worst was when she saw a baby lying under a filthy blanket, sick, crying and covered in sores. The baby’s father explained that his son was dying but there was nothing he could do about it. He then asked Dina if she would take the baby in a last chance effort to save him.
Dina, Kelly Kinnunen (the NEED Magazine videographer traveling with her) and their Afghan guides took baby Rahim and his father to a Kabul children’s hospital where doctors discovered he was malnourished, dehydrated, suffering from adema and an infected circumcision. They didn’t expect him to live through the night, but baby Rahim did. His miraculous recovery inspired Dina and her colleagues to return to the camp and help as many more sick children as they possibly could.
With the Afghan guides and hospitals transporting and providing low cost treatment to the children, Dina set up the “Helmand Children’s Medical Fund/HCMF” where Americans all around the world have been making donations to support this unprecedented civilian-led humanitarian effort.
In just a few short weeks, HCMF has gotten more than 70 sick children to the hospital for urgently needed medical treatment, and more children will be treated as the donations continue to come in. Dina’s Kabul team is also assembling malnutrition kits (including milk, sugar, high protein biscuits, soap and toothbrushes), and buying warm clothes, shoes and blankets for the children with money from the fund.
Many Americans ask whether they should collect clothing and supplies from here to send over, however, according to Dina’s research, the best thing that can happen for Afghanistan’s future is economic growth. The more the local blanket, clothing and toothbrush factories/stores can produce and sell, the more jobs they can provide. Economic stimulation will create a ripple effect that will help get these people on their feet, and ultimatley prevent many from joining Taliban and insurgent groups as a means to an end. Economic security plays a powerful role in peace-building.
“This fund is not only saving children’s lives, it is showing the Afghan civilians who the American people really are,” says Dina. ”The families of these children are aware that hundreds of ordinary Americans are now behind this effort. Not the government, not the military, not large NGOs…but just every day people who have stepped up to help some strangers. Strangers who are paying a large price for our freedom as Americans. They are overwhelmed with gratitude for what is happening, and to me, this has become an amazing peace-building effort in the midst of a very difficult world situation.”
To be a part of the HCMF, please go to www.warkidsrelief.org/donate
CNN video of the story: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/12/16/iyw.abawi.afghan.baby.rescue.cnn
FOX new video of the story: http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/thanksgiving-afghan-december-19-2009
To follow Dina’s blog from the trip visit: www.needmagazine.com/blog