Infectious hope

Instability is infectious, but so is hope.

Inside the building

I heard this said on Friday during a presentation at the headquarters of the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat on Sussex Drive. This blogpost is going to describe what the Aga Khan Foundation Canada (AKFC) does for Afghanistan, a subject in which I've become very interested since I joined a new Ottawa-CFUW group: University Women Helping Afghan Women. Last Wednesday I went to one of those meetings, too.

Anyway, one thing at a time.

The Aga Khan Development Network in Afghanistan joins forces with government agencies to stimulate and support the economy. This includes the financing of new infrastructure (hydro-electricity projects, bridges, clean water, proper sanitation) and of innovative agricultural programmes and education, particularly in remote parts of the country, as well as the offer of microloans. The First Microfinance Bank (FMFB) kick-starts small businesses with these loans, buying the beneficiaries—often women, seeking to supplement their family income—such essentials as flour and wood for a bread oven, or a sewing machine. "Loan officers" then pay regular visits to see how the new enterprise is going and to offer advice. The AKDN has established hundreds of savings groups in northern Afghanistan that serve a similar purpose.

Bridge at Darwaz (photo of a photo)

Farmers' Field Schools in Badakhshan, sponsored by the Aga Khan Foundation, sometimes called "the social conscience of Islam," have persuaded something like a thousand communities to stop growing poppies for the drug trade and to start growing fruit and nut trees instead. As regards the bridge-building and water management, separate villages are obliged to co-operate with one another in "development councils" (there are eighteen of these) so that ancient enmities are forgotten and so that, pooling their resources to improve matters, they become less reliant on help from the outside world. A larger-scale example of this is the construction of the Darwaz Friendship Bridge linking Afghanistan to Tajikstan across the River Panj.

Afghans in council (photo of a photo)

The AKDN provides a more basic form of education in the 200 elementary schools where a "whole school improvement model" has been initiated. A hundred schools have been constructed or rehabilitated after the devastation of war. Local parent-teacher associations urge teenage wives to continue their education before becoming mothers. Through the shura (the Islamic consultation process—illustrated in this picture) in each village, the AKDN has set up literacy classes for women and seed banks for farmers and gardeners.

There are two more agencies in Afghanistan worth mentioning, the Aga Khan Health Services (AKHS) and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC). The former makes the needs of women and children a priority, helping to train midwives, usually young women from remote areas, at Faizabad. This initiative has reduced child mortality by 85% in some parts of the country, and in Darwaz, in the north, a health clinic has been established with a staff of three doctors, serving 20,000 patients a year, some of whom travel for hours, for days, even, for their treatments or consultations.

The Aga Khan also takes Afghanistan's cultural needs very seriously, believing that "culture injects hope" into a deprived, traumatised community, or city, or nation. The AKTC uses its funds for the restoration of national monuments, for literacy and vocational training (in traditional weaving, for instance), for the arts and for the creation of parks and gardens. A few years ago, Canada's Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson, visited Kabul and was deeply impressed by the 16th century garden restored by the AKTC. She mentioned it in the speech she made at the Foundation Ceremony for the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat:

...in only a year, the Foundation had transformed a dusty ruin surrounded by broken walls into a beautiful terraced garden with reconstructed adobe enclosures and the first of a series of fountains. It was astonishing. Nothing could more eloquently express the mission of your Foundation—to improve the material lot of the world's most devastated regions and peoples, yes, but also to respect spiritual and aesthetic considerations. Babur's Gardens serve as a point of hope and illumination for everyone who cares about Afghanistan ...