AIDING THE DAY CARE CENTRE AT KABUL UNIVERSITY

Kabul University boasts a desolate day care centre, theoretically built to help female students and staff. One hundred children come every day to a damp, dismal place, barely heated, with paint peeling from its walls. Toys are carefully put on shelves  and rarely taken out because they cannot be replaced. Babies - up to one year old- spend much of their day in their cots. The other children sit around and play when they can: the valiant director would like to turn the place into some kind of pre-school, but lacks the means. Staff is paid about 30€ a month, which is an indicator of the overall indifference the day-care centre faces
Day-care centres in a university such as this one are vital for women’s rights, because this is how students, professors, clerical staff can actually go out to work and study. In Afghanistan, most girls are married before they are eighteen and a child is traditionally mandatory within the first year to confirm the bride's reproductive capacities. Yet, in urban centres, more and more women (including teenage mothers) want to study and work.

If we are to support women's rights and education, it is essential to help women to actually go to classes which is impossible if no one is willing to look after their children.

I met one woman, Ferida, whose mother-in-law refused to look after her grand-children whilst her daughter-in-law was out working, because she thought this would keep Ferida in the house. Through the day-care centre, Ferida and so many like her can go to her job and earn some much needed money for her family, as well as stake her (modest) right to some autonomy.

WOMEN IN WAR with its sister charity, FEMAID is launching a project to help the Kabul University day-care centre. The Parisian suburb of Malakoff has become involved in this, especially through collecting educational toys and helping to raise some funds. Local day-care centres and kindergartens will be involved and the general public.

The French Ministry of Defence has accepted to ship over and deliver 100 kg of toys. We would like to raise the money to redecorate and refurbish the day-care centre.

Somehow aid agencies seem to have by-passed this issue. As the director of the day-care centre mournfully admitted: "Nobody cares about us, yet the children here would deserve so much more..."

We will also be aiding the day-care centre of Balkh University at Mazar-e-Sharif. Here the aim is to do some basic repair work for the roof before the winter sets in and purchase cribs for the babies.

This is indeed a fitting project for an association of women studying women in conflict zones

An all-day event will be held on Saturday October 4th at the the Town Hall of Malakoff, a Parisian suburb. A sale of Afghan (and other) handicrafts will be held on Saturday September 27th

You can contribute by sending cheques and donations to our Femaid account which deals with Women in War's finances, or go via Paypal- click on www.femaid.org

See also article that appeared on Sisyphe, the Canadian feminist website

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SELF-DEFENCE CLASSES FOR GIRLS IN BUKAVU (Kivu) in DRC

Rape in DRC has taken on unprecedented, catastrophic proportions, especially in the Eastern DRC, where Bukavu is situated. Some 27 000 cases were reported in this area in 2006, which does not account for the scores of undocumented rapes. The victims- children, girls, older women's lives are destroyed forever afterwards, as they are rejected by society

We have launched a (for the time being) modest project, which if supported could slowly contribute to truly help these victims

Starting in the month of August, our association has helped launch self-defence classes for girls in Bukavu. and we are helping to finance courses that are being held in four different venues in the town, in part financed by FEMAID with Women in War.

For several months, we have been working on this project with human rights activist and noted militant feminist Venantie Bisimwa and l' Association l'Union Sportive pour l'Autodefense Populaire (USADEP).

These courses are designed for female high-school students who encounter daily provocation and sexual threats on their way to school.
These courses are helping to restore a measure of self-confidence to these girls who are constantly threatened.

So far, we can afford to help finance these courses for three months, after that we would need €900 a month to pay for the eight instructors, the location of the sports hall, the outfits for students and everything else

This is an modest, experimental project, we would like to continue all through the school year, but this really depends on finances and YOUR help.... if everything works out, self-defence could be integrated in the official education and sports curriculum. .
This means vanquishing stereotypes of weakness and passivity. Naturally, there is not much you can do opposite a bunch of armed thugs, but a couple of broken teeth, a knee-jerk in the right direction will certainly contribute to the victims' dignity and will to fight back. And slowly change gender stereotyping

The positive feed-back of this project has shown that we are on the right track

You can contribute by sending cheques and donations to our Femaid account (address sent on demand) which deals with Women in War's finances, or go via Paypal- click on www.femaid.org

contact us for more details

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