Afghanistan

dreamfly in Afghanistan

The dreamfly –Rubia collaboration funding De Las Kar Women’s Center ran from June 2010 thru July 2011. During the duration of this project, a women’s center was established in the Campha neighborhood of Jalalabad serving women in that poverty stricken and depressed area with classes in vocational skills training, basic literacy / numeracy, civics and human rights, and health and hygiene.  The opening of the Center coincided with the implementation of a new Rubia initiative ‘Threads of Change’. As a result women from several ethnic groups in Jalalabad and the surrounding area including Pashai, Nuristani, and Pashtun, joined together for programs at the Center.

Threads of Change curriculum development and classes were covered under separate grants from the US Embassy and Dining for Women.  These grants also helped supplement basic

needs for the Center including additional guards, stipends for participants, curriculum kits, refreshments, communications, fuel, and additional education staff, computers.

Over the duration of the dreamfly-funded program year more than 550 women attended classes at the De Las Kar Center and at a satellite center in Majburabad, a suburb of Jalalabad

. As part of the education and training women created embroidered illustrations of the lessons promoting women as conflict resolvers, family health and hygiene, women’s rights to education and voting,  and banning child marriage.  This reinforced the vocational skills in fine embroidery women were developing.

The most exquisite of the embroideries will be included in a traveling exhibit about Rubia, Threads of Change, and the power of the needle in 2012.  Additional Threads of Change embroideries will be sold in conjunction with the exhibit, online and thru special auctions.

During the course of the year-long program, women created Rubia design embroideries which are being sold in the local market.  They also created a special order of ‘insignia’ bags for Wellesley College class of 1956 reunion.

A total of $55,006 was raised through the efforts of dreamfly for this program.

Learn more about our efforts in Afghanistan on our partners website here.