Global Partnership for Afganistan

GPFA and GlobalGiving Team up for Mother’s Day

admin — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:45:53 +0000

Celebrate Mom this Sunday with a Gift in Honor of Afghan Women Farmers

Sowing the Seeds for Education: A Story from the Field

admin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:58:37 +0000

Dear Friend,

In early March, GPFA set out to raise funds for our International Women’s Day campaign to help nearly two thousand Afghan women entrepreneurs shore up their family livelihoods. With less than a week to meet our match, we have reached 85% of our target, and with your help we’ll make it all the way.

Sowing the Seeds for Education
Our success with this fundraising campaign is less about numerical results and more about the lives we can change. Waiting for our help are women like Sima in Afghanistan’s northern province of Parwan. Unlike many Afghan refugees who were forced out their homes, war came to Sima 18 years ago right in the village of Madad Khil where she has lived all her life. Her husband was killed in Afghanistan’s brutal civil war, leaving her to support her six children.

Uneducated but undaunted, Sima patched together jobs – working on other people’s farms, cleaning homes, sewing handicrafts, and collecting wood to sell at the local market. Now her commitment to her children and their education is paying off. Four of her children are in university. “Providing for the education of my children through my work is the biggest success in my life,” says Sima.

Planting a Future
Today Sima is setting her sights on an entrepreneurial vision. One of the 1,500 women participating in GPFA’s “farm-to-market” producers program, she has a small parcel of land. With the experience she gained working on other people’s farms, she knows how to prepare the soil, weed, fertilize, and harvest. Now she’s growing her own tomatoes, onions, peppers, carrots, and leeks. And with GPFA’s help, she is learning the practical skills she needs – like sorting and packing in a professional way – to expand her production and get her produce to lucrative markets. Sima wants more than an income. She wants to make a profit.

Sima’s vision is clear: she will reinvest her profits in her children’s education and in more land. She will create a nursery to sell trees and plants to other farmers. A small woodlot can give her family a diversified source of long-term income.

Can we count on you to invest in Sima and other women like her? Help us meet our challenge grant target of $25,000 by next Monday, April 15th by making a donation today. We have almost reached our goal and your donation – no matter how big or small – will help Sima reach hers.

Sincerely,

George Melton
Managing Director
Kabul, Afghanistan

P.S. Donations to this campaign can be made online or by mailing a check. Please email Kate McLetchie at kmcletchie@gpfa.org to make a campaign pledge by check. But hurry, the campaign ends on Monday, April 15th!

From Hired Help to Self Help: A Story from the Field

admin — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:16:03 +0000

Dear Friend of GPFA,

As we enter the spring planting season, I’d like to share a story with you about just one of the women farmers in GPFA’s new “Farm-to-Market” Program.

Shahnaz, a civil war widow from Afghanistan’s northern province of Parwan, worked year after year as hired help for her neighbors. In winter, she cleaned their houses. In the growing season, she cultivated their vegetable gardens—all to eke out barely enough money to support her six children.

From Hired Help—to Self Help
Today, all that has changed. Now Shahnaz is hard at work cultivating her own garden on her own land, thanks to our women’s “Farm-to-Market” Program. Finally, after years of laboring for others, she has what she lacked—the supplies, technical support, and training to grow fruits and vegetables for the benefit of her own family’s income and the means to get her produce sold in a profitable market.

Two weeks ago, GPFA launched its International Women’s Day campaign to raise $25,000 to match a challenge grant dollar for dollar. That is a total of $50,000 to support and expand our work with women farmers. The campaign is off to a fantastic start. But so very many more women like Shahnaz are still waiting for a jump-start, and we still need more funding to reach our match.

The Multiplier Effect
Today Shahnaz is hard at work in GPFA’s first Producer Orientation training where she is learning best practices for preparing the soil and spacing seedlings for the spring planting season. “When Afghan women are encouraged and supported,” she says, “they have the talent and capacity to improve their livelihoods.”

Her tenacious spirit has a huge multiplier effect. Though she did not attend school, two of her daughters are completing secondary school, and another is a second year engineering student at nearby Alberoni University.

Will you help continue the multiplier effect for women and girls by making a donation to our campaign by April 15th? It is time to plant and your contribution could make all the difference for Afghan women farmers like Shahnaz.

Sincerely,

George Melton
Managing Director
Kabul, Afghanistan

Land preparation training conducted in early March by GPFA's Women's Program Manager, Fatima Sardar, for women farmers from Parwan Province, including Shahnaz.

Women Changing Afghanistan: Help GPFA Meet this Match!

admin — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:30:08 +0000

Dear Friend of GPFA,

I am writing you as Global Partnership for Afghanistan’s new Managing Director with a special appeal on International Women’s Day: we need to match a $25,000 challenge grant to support and expand our work with women farmers.

Women Changing Afghanistan
Despite the obvious challenges, women are making real progress in Afghanistan. Girls are in school, women are voting, and the country has seen its first female governor, mayor, and parliamentarian speaker (now a leading candidate for next year’s presidential elections). GPFA is doing its part to demonstrate to the world that rural Afghan women are already making valuable contributions to their economy and, in doing so, securing the best possible future for their families and their country.

Did you know that nearly 9,000 of the 29,000 farm entrepreneurs GPFA supporters have helped create and develop are women? Now our goal is to dramatically expand that number as we roll out our newest activities to more women and more locations.

GPFA’s newest projects are closing the gap between farm producers—who lack infrastructure to get products to markets—and emerging agribusinesses—which can’t access production from small farmers. GPFA is bringing the two together and helping 1,000 women get their fruit and vegetables to markets. We are also helping an additional 500 women to develop farm businesses specifically to grow strawberries, and training another 300 women in sorting and packing the produce before it goes to market.

International Women’s Day: Help Meet Our $25,000 Challenge
To support and expand our current work with women, two very generous donors have issued GPFA a challenge grant of $25,000 in celebration of International Women’s Day. From today through April 15th, we need to raise $25,000 to match this challenge. Please help us to reach our goal by making a donation today.

Today, the world will unite to celebrate International Women’s Day. Please join our celebration with your contribution to GPFA. Our work represents another opportunity for us to highlight the power and potential of women—to improve their families, their communities, and their nations.

Your support of GPFA is literally the backbone of our work. I cannot thank you enough for championing our mission and believing in what we do.

I look forward to sending you periodic updates during the campaign, including sharing stories from the field of how your support is making a real difference for our women farmers and their families.

Sincerely,

George Melton
Managing Director
Kabul, Afghanistan

GPFA Names George Melton as New Managing Director

admin — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 20:39:46 +0000

GPFA is pleased to announce that George Melton joined as Managing Director on February 1st, bringing to GPFA nearly 40 years of experience in forestry, agronomy, soil and water conservation practices, and management in both the US and abroad. Most recently, George served as the USDA Agricultural Advisor for the Mazar-E-Sharif Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan, developing and implementing several large-scale agricultural projects, working in partnership with the Directorate of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (DAIL) and others.

George replaces Roger Hardister who is retiring as leader of GPFA. Said Dana Freyer, GPFA Chair, “Operating out of Kabul, Roger led GPFA for the past four years, where he built a superb team of Afghan men and women staff and shaped diverse programs that have created more than 29,000 Afghan entrepreneurs and served nearly 300,000 men, women and children. We are delighted that George Melton has agreed to join GPFA as our new Managing Director at this pivotal time. With his talents and expertise, we anticipate that GPFA will be making ever-increasing contributions to the Afghan people.”

Based in Kabul, and making regular trips to GPFA’s New York office, George will oversee partnerships with individuals, governments, and institutions, with the goal of helping Afghans create farm businesses that alleviate poverty, build sustainable livelihoods, and renew the environment.

You can read George’s full bio here.

We hope you’ll join GPFA’s Board, Advisors, and staff in welcoming George aboard.

Dana Freyer at Princeton Senior Resource Center

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:32:32 +0000

GPFA Co-Founder and Co-Chair, Dana Freyer, spoke to more than 100 community members at the Princeton Senior Resource Center’s (PSRC) “Living With Purpose” event Friday, March 2, 2012. The event encouraged older adults to see the “encore” stage of life as a chance to reinvent themselves and find ways to make a difference.

Dana spoke about her decision to retire from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in New York City in 2010, and redirect her attention to create the Global Partnership for Afghanistan.

Click here to learn more about the event.

GPFA Women’s Empowerment Program Brochure

admin — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:53:56 +0000

Global Partnership for Afghanistan has recently published a new brochure on our Women’s Empowerment Program.

The brochure details GPFA’s extraordinary work with rural Afghan women to create farmbusinesses that alleviate poverty, build sustainable livelihoods and promote economic development.

To view an electronic version of the brochure, please click here.

If you would like to receive a brochure by mail, please contact: lharte@gpfa.org.

Forbes Magazine spotlights Dana Freyer and GPFA’s work with Women

admin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:16:06 +0000

Sasha Galbraith, a contributor to Forbes Magazine and a partner at Jay Galbraith Management Consultants, highlights GPFA’s co-founder and Board Chair, Dana Freyer, and our efforts to bring economic opportunities to rural Afghan women in Dollars & Skills: Women Helping Afghan Women Fight the Taliban. Galbraith gives an excellent overview of GPFA’s Economic Empowerment Program for women and our success in bringing incomes and sustainable livelihoods to 125,000 women.

Click here for the article.
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Dollars & Skills: Women Helping Afghan Women Beat the Taliban

Sasha Galbraith, Contributor

March 8, 2012

How do you win the fight against the Taliban? According to Dana Freyer, chair and co-founder of Global Partnership for Afghanistan (GPFA), “The best bulwark against the Taliban are members of the community who have an economic stake in their lands and who resist insurgents’ threats and intimidation.” Women are doing just that in parts of Afghanistan.

For the past seven years, Freyer and her organization have been delivering tree saplings and agricultural training to rural villagers in 13 provinces across Afghanistan. GPFA’s strategy has always been to partner with individual landowners who can provide the labor required to till the land and raise crops. For every sapling GPFA delivers to a farmer, she (or he) must pay the organization back with a cutting once the tree is strong and healthy enough to produce cuttings. After seven years, a farmer’s half-acre poplar or willow woodlot can yield up to $30,000 in net profit from lumber sales. The organization also teaches women how to cultivate vegetable and strawberry gardens for their families, but also for sale in local markets. Additionally, GPFA supports entrepreneurs through training and seed capital in nursery,solar food drying and beekeeping ventures. The non-profit has worked with 25,000 entrepreneur farmers benefiting 250,000 men, women and children.

But the biggest story is how GPFA continues to be so successful in empowering women to earn a sustainable income — with the full support of the male villagers. Importantly, it’s not an exclusively women’s organization; in fact, 80 percent of its efforts involve training and education for men and women. However, in each new village it enters, GPFA goes to the village elders and listens to their specific wants and needs, and in return for training and saplings, GPFA always has one condition: women must be active participants and beneficiaries in the enterprise development programs. The elders agree provided that the GPFA staff who will work with local women, are also women.

Freyer reflects on the GPFA’s approach:

“What do people need more than anything in Afghanistan? They need jobs and income. Yes, they need education, but they have to put food on the table. And if women have jobs and income, their children will go to school and their girls will stay in school longer. But we also knew that you can’t change attitudes towards women just by going to women. You have to work with the men…Once the men see the benefits to their families of women’s increased income, they buy in. And the impact on the women and their families is just amazing, because we know that women’s earnings are spent on better nutrition and better education for their families. Women now have a voice in their communities.”

Now back to those Taliban. Last year for International Women’s Day, GPFA’s Afghan staff organized project demonstration fairs in Logar and Wardak provinces, both of which continue to have Taliban in their midst . GPFA invited women from the surrounding villages to teach them how they could earn an income by growing strawberries, vegetables and fruit orchards, or running a solar food drying operation. They also demonstrated the power of turning honey into money through beekeeping. But prior to the event, the Taliban harassed several of the women. Dana Freyer describes it:

“The Taliban are famous for sending villagers threatening ‘night letters.’ Which say, ‘Don’t go to this or your family will suffer.’ The women, instead of succumbing, invited three more women to come. There were around 1600 women between the two communities. Nobody could ever recall seeing such a huge gathering of women outside of their compound walls… These women are so strong. They have to be, just to survive. And their voices and business successes are changing the attitudes of men.”

Through GPFA’s perseverance and patient efforts, several thousand rural, mostly illiterate women are now income-producing entrepreneurs in Afghanistan. Once again, the power of women helping women has turned a war torn territory into a peaceful profit maker.

GPFA’s Dana Freyer at Council of Foreign Relations

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:00:09 +0000

GPFA’s Co-Founder and Chair of the Board of Directors, Dana Freyer, presented to the Women and Foreign Policy Advisory Council at the Council on Foreign Relations on February 7, 2012. The topic of the discussion was GPFA’s Women’s Empowerment Programs and their larger role in reshaping Afghan society and culture.

The Women and Foreign Policy Advisory Council’s members include leaders from the business, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors throughout the country who have a keen interest in issues related to U.S. foreign policy toward women in developing countries.

The program was moderated by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy and Deputy Director, Women and Foreign Policy Program of the Council on Foreign Relations. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is the New York Times best-selling author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana; Contributing Editor-At-Large for Newsweek Magazine and The Daily Beast, reporting on economic and development issues with a focus on women.

For more information on CFR, please visit their website at: www.cfr.org

For more information Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, please visit her website at: www.gaylelemmon.com

GPFA Fall Benefit Update

admin — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:45:56 +0000

Regreening the Silk Road

Global Partnership for Afghanistan would like to thank all of our supporters who attended our benefit gala, “Regreening the Silk Road”, on October 25th. We had a wonderful turnout with over 220 people passionate about GPFA and our work to help rural Afghans develop sustainable agricultural livelihoods.

CLICK HERE to view photos of the event!

The venue, Three Sixty°, afforded beautiful views of the Hudson River, a wide selection of exclusive silent auction items, a traditional Afghan sitar player and a fabulous dinner. Most importantly, keynote speaker, Ambassador Peter Tomsen delivered a fascinating and crucial speech in which he explained the critical role of development in achieving peace in Afghanistan.

Highlights from Ambassador Tomsen’s speech:

“GPFA’s central stress on making Afghans the supported side of the reconstruction process, and GPFA or the U.S. Government for that matter, the supporting side, is exactly right.”
“The extraordinary success GPFA has achieved has mainly been generated by putting Afghans in the lead and giving them the wherewithal to do the job – advice, training, technology and capital.”

The attendance and generosity of GPFA Global Partners made the night a huge success and we are extremely grateful. With your help, GPFA will be better able to revitalize the farms, orchards, and forests that once flourished along the famed Silk Road and thereby lift thousands of Afghan families out of poverty.