Contacts in Kabul

On November 2011, Mina Wali, the founder of Hope of Mother, went to Afghanistan for a few months. The main reason for this return was the need to develop local contacts in order to develop a draft concerning the establishment of a Vocational Center in Kabul.

This Vocational Center aims to match some of the major challenges facing Afghanistan after the withdrawal of foreign troops. Namely:

- To promote education and training;
- To create employment;
- To support entrepreneurship of Afghan women;
- To root the youth in the country;
- To aware about the dangers of drug use;

On her agenda, Mina planned meetings in several Afghan ministries, as well as in embassies and international institutions with offices opened in the Afghan capital. In Kabul, Mina had the support of Lieutenant Colonel Octávio Vieira.

Photos by Octávio Vieira

Small heroes: Nazzi

The girl in the photo is Nazzi. She is only 15 years old and she is proud of the carpet she made, along with three older sisters, at the Hope of Mother Vocational Training Center.

In Afghanistan, many young girls like Nazzi don't know how talented they are. They do not know that they have capabilities that can provide them a different life from the one they are aimed at birth. Many girls, like Nazzi, grow and live thinking that their role in the society is to get married, have children, cook and serve their husbands.

At the HOM Vocational Training Centre, Nazzi opened her mind. And she began dreaming about other goals and a different life.

Photo HOM

Hope of Mother call

Kabul, Afghanistan

October 2011


The winds of time are passing by all over the world, and we are facing and living crucial historical moments that might challenge our own survival as human beings. Things and changes that we thought would never happen are taking place everywhere. Afghanistan is one of the countries where we can feel those winds of change. In fact, NATO and other International Organizations will start leaving the country soon, along with the transference of security and governance to afghan hands.

Thousands of jobs might be in risk due to that, and the majority of the Afghans don't have any special skills or learned any specific profession. In the last 10 years, millions and millions of euros were invested on education - schools and universities - but still the new graduated students don't have a place to go, after their graduation. The only way to get a job is to fly abroad, leaving the country without their best skilled men and women.

The afghan non governmental organization (NGO) Hope Of Mother (HOM), in partnership with the portuguese Foundation AMI (Assistência Médica Internacional) have been developing an outstanding humanitarian work provinding, since 2006, education and health care to more than 600 boys and girls in a school in Nangarhar, Jalalabad province.

AMI funded and continues funding the project, and the school is actually considered a model school to all Afghanistan. But there's still a lot to be done, if we want a prosper afghan economy with the help of their youth, men and women. HOM, sponsored by AMI, is developing a project that can be seen as the best solution for the incoming problems, which is the constrution of a Vocational Center in Kabul, that will be able to train and teach all the ones who want to learn a profession, a job.

Those job learning courses will be paid, like the ones that take place in Europe, but a solid and well structured project must be developed in order to be presented to the European Union or other institutions as a Funding Candidate.

The project is already being built by HOM, in the US, with some added ideas like the inclusion of a Graduate Work Placement for new graduated students looking for their first job. This intents to absorve the graduated students from the universities, give them a job and keep the best skilled elements inside the country, ensuring the future of Afghanistan.

Please help us, spreading the Hope of Mother page in Facebook and giving/sending us YOUR IDEAS/PROPOSALS that might improve the project, turning it as one FROM ALL OF US, but most of all, a Project for the Future of Afghanistan. 

 

Thanks indeed.

Octávio Vieira

 

Photos HOM

 

Talent show

Dresses, purses, carpets, necklaces, earrings, bracelets ... items made in Hope of Mother's Vocational Training Center.

 

Photos HOM