Provide relief to women in Afghanistan

Over the past two years, rising food and fuel prices, growing unemployment and increasing restrictions on women's freedoms have been continuing to pose huge challenges in the everyday lives of ordinary Afghans. An astonishing 90% of the population have struggled to put food on the table with at least four out of five households having experienced income reduction and taken on debt. With the ongoing humanitarian crisis showing few signs of abating, extreme debt leaves families unable to rebuild their lives and extremely vulnerable to future challenges.

Living in a remote village in Ghor province, there have always been limited ways for Amena to earn an income. As a result, her family had been struggling to get by. So, when Afghanaid came to her village, Amena jumped at the opportunity to join a self-help group and start her own kitchen garden. These self-help groups bring together 10-25 women each week to undertake vocational skills training, accumulate group savings, loan each other money and launch their own small businesses.

Equipped by Afghanaid with this support network of women around her, Amena learnt how to create her own kitchen garden and also enrolled in a training course to improve her knowledge on how best to look after her garden. "I was trained by Afghanaid in vegetable cultivation for six months," Amena told us, "Vegetables like cucumber, tomato, cabbage, onion, chives, carrot and zucchini."

Now, Amena is not only improving the nutrition of her family, but has also set up a micro-business, selling surplus produce at the local market. This is a vital contribution to her family’s household income, lessening the pressure on overstretched male family members.

With her invaluable new skills in gardening, sauce-making and small business management, and now able to take loans from her group to purchase seeds and to afford transportation to the market, Amena has all the tools she needs to help her family rebuild. 

This way, we can cover some of our expenses. Since I started this, my life has improved so much.

This life changing assistance through the self help groups recognises the transformative nature of the bond female communities share, and taps into women's unfulfilled potential. The groups allow us to help women like Amena lift their families out of debt, start building for the future and become the change-makers they have always had the power to be. With the generous support of donors such as yourself, we are able to continue helping more women become their own agents of change.

Thank you for providing relief to women in Afghanistan through supporting this appeal on GlobalGiving. As we head further into the summer months, our Summer Appeal: It Starts With Her, will be the focal point for our work with women which supports the formation and successes of these self-help groups in rural Afghanistan, and this appeal on GlobalGiving will be deactivated.
We hope that you will continue supporting more women like Amena, and to do so please head to our website where you can donate to and find out more about our Summer Appeal.

To stay up to date on our projects and see some of the work we do, we’d love for you to follow us on our socials (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or our TikTok). We look forward to seeing you there!

Thank you, once again for your invaluable support in providing relief to the women of Afghanistan.