GIFTING HOPE: Notebooks, Pens, Pencils and ABLE Box Libraries
To ASCHIANA Center, Kabul, Afghanistan from Friends of ASCHIANA, April 2010
 |
 |
Elinor and girls at ASCHIANA's Kote Sange Center with new school supplies |
Elinor reading "Harvest Time", a book from the ABLE Box Library, to the ASCHIANA girls |
In 2003, Elinor Edmunds Miller and Carolyn Straub traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan to visit ASCHIANA Center, an Afghan NGO that provides a basic education for streetworking girls and boys. They were inspired to go by the pictures of the beautiful artwork done by the children. Once there, they fell in love with the girls and boys and with Afghanistan. They bought 33 pieces of the children's calligraphy art which they sold in the U.S. and sent the money back to Engineer Yousef, founder and director of ASCHIANA, to help buy school supplies for the centers. Since then, Elinor has returned to ASCHIANA and Afghanistan five more times, including serving as a volunteer English teacher for nine months at ASCHIANA. They continue to sell the ASCHIANA children's artwork to raise money for ASCHIANA.
In April of 2010, Elinor Edmunds Miller returned to Afghanistan to again buy school supplies for the girls and boys at ASCHIANA Center. During her visit, she personally distributed:
- School supplies to almost 3,000 girls and boys who attend ASCHIANA’s seven Kabul locations
- Hygiene supplies to the girls and boys in the ASCHIANA’s tent classrooms at four IDP (internally displaced persons) camps in Kabul
- Whiteboards, markers and calendar notebooks for the teachers
- Computers, printers and paper for the computer classes
- Needles, thread and material for the tailoring classes
- Wood and woodworking tools for the woodworking classes
- Play dough, puzzles and beads for the special needs classes
- Paints, brushes and paper for the art classes
- 10 ABLE Box Libraries, metal boxes with 250 books in Dari and Pashtu for early readers on science, democracy, Afghan folk tales, raising chickens, health and nutrition
 |
 |
Elinor, boys and new school supplies in ASCHIANA's class at Baghe-Daoud IDP camp |
Elinor with boys at Camp Lo-in Charahi Qamber IDP Camp |
Thank you for your contributions, but our work together is not done! We are all connected, by that line of hope, strung from our hearts, your hearts to the hearts of the girls and boys and their parents at ASCHIANA Center in Kabul, Afghanistan. With your help we will keep gifting hope when we return to Afghanistan in April of 2011. Hope and joy for an education, a better life, for God's children in Afghanistan. Thank you for your generous gifts and prayers!
Every penny raised goes to Afghanistan to support the girls and boys of ASCHIANA Center. Elinor and Carolyn personally pay all of Friends' expenses, both in the U.S. and in Afghanistan.
|
