Please visit Rayela’s Fiber Focus and learn more about Afghan Hands. Its founder, Matin Maulawizada, says,
Afghan Hands teaches skills to help Afghan widows gain independence, literacy, and a livable wages. At our centers in and around Kabul, women learn to create embroidered shawls and scarves, and the exquisite embroidery they make connects them to a wider world.
The centers are places to gather, study, and work. We pay the women to attend classes in the morning and embroider in the afternoon. Without this project, they could not educate themselves. Through Afghan Hands, they leave the walls of their compounds and attend seminars on basic human, legal, and religious rights. They prepare for work as free women do elsewhere in the world. This way, no one will ever imprison them in the name of law, honor, or religion.
Afghan Hands is nominated for a BBC challenge that will award $20,000 plus publicity to a group that shows innovation and economic development at a grassroots level. Please consider supporting this organization in some way.
Thanks for posting about this group, Denise! It’s such a wonderful effort and their embroidery skills are something else! I truly believe that efforts like these will bring around much more change than our military or force. Community crafts, historically here in our country and elsewhere, have been a glue that cements social unity in a fundamental way and we should do all we can to help these efforts grow and replicate themselves.