HEMEFund Afghanistan

I am a U.S. Army veteran, deployed to Afghanistan in 2009. I founded a nonprofit organization, HEMEFund Worldwide, to improve the lives of women and children in Afghanistan through economic sustainability ten years ago. 

While serving as a combat medic in Afghanistan, I met an old Afghan man who walked three days in barefoot to our military outpost seeking treatment on his infected toe. We treated him and sent him home, but that night, I agonized with guilt, sending the old man back without a pair of shoes. That incidence changed my life, and that year in deployment, we helped over 3,000 Afghans through various humanitarian projects. We expanded our work and have been operating vocational training centers for Afghan women for the past ten years.  I am married and in my last year at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.  My wife and I reside in Massachusetts with two lovely teenage girls. 

There are over a million widows and orphans in extreme poverty without protection or support in Afghanistan. One out of five children dies before the age of five. Currently, 5 million children are not in school, and only 6 % of the newborn babies are registered at birth, which means most of the children cannot be protected by law or seek medical and educational support.  

 We have been operating literacy and sewing vocational training centers to train Afghan widowed mothers and orphan girls for the last ten years.  We understand and have confidence in running the project effectively and efficiently.  We would like to offer our services in all 34 provinces. It will take many years to cover the whole nation, but we can help the most devastated and vulnerable populations improve lives through economic sustainability.  It will bring food to their families and education to children in Afghanistan.

There are over a million widows and orphans in Afghanistan.  They are by far the most vulnerable, unprotected, unprovided, abandoned, and suppressed populations in Afghanistan.  What we are trying to do is bring education to children and economic sustainability to the women through the vocational training project.

The cost of education in Afghanistan from primary to higher education is free. Why can't they then send their children to school? I wondered. After many interviews, I found out that they can't buy school supplies for their children.  This is sad, isn't it? There are over 5 million children who are not in school in Afghanistan. We operate vocational training centers for widowed mothers, orphaned girls, and women in chronic poverty, hoping to change that tragedy.  We teach literacy, so these women understand the importance of education.  We also train them in practical life skills and provide the tools they need to start a business at home, so they can immediately generate income upon graduation.  This accomplishes several things. One, these women understand the importance of education.  Two, with the income generated, they bring food for the family and send their children to school.

We operate community-based literacy and sewing vocational training centers in Afghanistan.  Our students are widowed mothers, orphaned girls, and women in chronic poverty from the age of 16 to 45.

It is a six months course, teaching literacy, simple numeration, basic hygiene, and marketing.  Most of all, we train them the sewing skills that they can use to work at home to generate revenue for their families. When they graduate, we present a tailor's business startup kit to everyone who successfully demonstrated tailoring skills and literacy education they received from us.  The kit includes a brand new hand-cranked sewing machine among nine other sewing business-related items.  For the following twelve months after graduation, we visit or interview the graduates three times and make sure that they have started working from home.  What we emphasize is that they generate income, so that they can feed their families and send their children to school themselves.  Our program is designed to bring hope, dignity, self-worth, and motherhood to hopeless and devastated mothers in extreme poverty and food and education to Afghan children who would be on the streets begging or working, otherwise.

We serve widowed mothers, orphan girls, and women in chronic poverty who are between the ages of 16 to 45 in Afghanistan.  Afghanistan is the 11th poorest country in the world where the average monthly income is 50 USD.  According to the Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey, 55% of the Afghans live on under a dollar a day. Four decades of war has left 600,000 to 2 million widows and 1.6 million orphans in Afghanistan.

The average age of widows is 35, 95% of them are illiterate, and an estimated 90% have 3 to 8 children. Widows are the most vulnerable group in Afghanistan. They are exposed to violence, sexual abuse, suicide, becoming street beggars, and loss of social identity, protection, and support. Widows' children, especially the girls, are forced to withdraw from school, exposed to child labor,  prostitution, early forced child marriage, trafficking, and sale. The education system is largely collapsed. Our project empowers these vulnerable women with basic literacy education and vocational skill that enables them to generate income from home. With the revenue generated, these women can feed their families and send their children to school for a brighter future.

Afghanistan is a war-torn country of four decades.  Men were killed, and millions of women and children were left without support, protection, or education.  They are begging, collecting trash, or working on the streets. Without a male escort, women can't even walk outside of the home. They lost dignity and pride as mothers. Children are expected to work on the streets to bring money from a young age. There are millions of these women and children in Afghanistan. We are bringing hope and smile to elevate self-worth and pride of these women and children through economic sustainability and education. 

I joined the U.S. army in 2008, at the age of 40.  A year later, I was deployed to Afghanistan as a combat medic. One morning in March in deployment, an old Afghan man walked to us, seeking a treatment done on his infected toe. He said he walked three days and three nights to get to us. But he had no shoes. I wanted to put mine on him, but I sent him home barefoot after the treatment. That night, I agonized with guilt, thinking about the old man walking back without shoes. I suddenly started noticing the devastating lives of Afghans and was filled with compassion. That was how our work in Afghanistan was started eleven years ago. 

During the deployment, two Afghan brothers (translators at the time), Dr. Rafi and Asad, helped me organize and execute humanitarian projects which ended up helping 3,000 Afghan adults and children.  We were amazed at what we have accomplished together despite limited resources and a challenging environment.  Our work continued to help the most vulnerable populations, women and children, in Afghanistan. 

Korean war in 1950 destroyed Korea. We were poor and hungry. I am 52 years old, and I grew up experiencing poverty until our family moved to America when I was 16 years old. American soldiers came and fought for us, and the American people came and helped us educate and built the nation again.  I am now the same American soldier who fought for Afghanistan and the same American who came back to educate and train people.

I took this work as the calling for my life. I have committed my life to serve them.  I want to give them the same opportunity we received.  It is my honor and joy to serve them. 

That night when I agonized with guilt thinking about the old Afghan man walking back home without shoes, I learned how a selfish man I was. All my life, I worked for myself. I wanted to live a better and wealthier life, yet that old man transformed me into a completely different man.   Now my life revolves around them. I have never been to Afghanistan or known anyone before, but I love them as my brothers and sisters. 

There were over hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers who fought in Afghanistan during the last two decades, and they, too, witnessed the devastating lives of Afghans in extreme violence and poverty just like I did. Only a few soldiers decided to help them. Out of those a few soldiers, even fewer came back to Afghanistan and continuing to help them.  I live among them in Afghanistan. I earned their hearts to work with me.

The military taught me to focus, be persistent, and to work hard with integrity and honor. I am grateful to the military for what they have taught me to be.  These are the valuable leadership skills I obtained from the military that I am training our leadership team in Afghanistan.

I grew up as a third-generation Chrisitan. It taught me to love our neighbors and sacrifice for them. These are the most important lessons in my life.  Even when they were strangers to me, I gave everything I had and served them.

Growing up in poverty made me able to empathize with them.  I understood their pain, and my words carried the weight of compassion and sincerity.  I am a visionary driven by missions.  The work we are doing in Afghanistan will take much longer than my life; however, it needs to be started now, and I am more than willing to be the one standing in front to take the responsibility.

About a month after we opened our first community-based literacy and sewing vocational training center at a remote village in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan, I received an urgent call from Dr. Rafi, who was in charge of the operation, in the middle of the night.  He was in shock and reported me that there was a threat in the village from the Taliban.  He said that the Taliban decapitated one of the villager's head and warned women from getting an education.  We taught literacy and trained women to work and were in imminent danger.  Our teachers and students were frightened, and we had no time to waste.  Instead of shutting our training center down, we moved to a different location and continued our project. 

About two years ago, a local mafia noticed that a bunch of women came in and out of our facility every day and became suspicious that we were in the prostitution business.  They planned an attack on us.  As soon as we got hold of the news, we went to them in person and communicated ourselves.  We explained what we were doing to help the community.  After days of communication, they finally backed down.

One of the important characters we want our staff to learn is servant leadership.  It is not easy to be humble and serve, but our work requires that we lower ourselves and serve our neighbors. I explain and emphasize the importance of humility, but it is not so easy to practice.

One day, to demonstrate humility, I washed male staff's feet with soap and dried them with a towel at a regular monthly workshop. There were giggles and resistance, but when they learned what I was showing to them, they all quiet down.

I knelt before them and thoroughly cleaned their dirty feet using soap with my two hands. A week later, I received a written message from one of our staff and wrote the following that touched my heart. "When you touched our dirty feet that day, you  did not just touch our feet, but also our hearts."   It is these young Afghan men and women who will continue to lead and serve their communities to make changes in the lives of the devasting Afghan women and children after my life retires.  We value their work and are doing ou best for their capacity building.

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Our project is unique and innovative because it is designed not only to train and help our students(women) to become home business owners but also ensures that their children are fed and sent to school for a brighter future.  Our project is cost-efficient and effective in generating real results in people's lives. We conduct three post-graduate surveys at month 3, month 6, and month 12 after graduation to make sure, one, they started working at home, two, are making money every month, three, children are attending schools, and four, children are getting fed.  These four questions help us to understand how effective our project is in improving the lives of the women in Afghanistan.

According to the surveys we conducted, over 90% of graduates work at home, making $20 to $250 a month.  Most of our students never went to school and were utterly illiterates when they came to us.   Knowing that the average monthly income in Afghanistan $50, our students with 6  months of training are doing well.

We currently operate seven training centers in three provinces.  We are ready to expand to all provinces and help many more women and children nationwide. We emphasize quality education and products to our staff and students.  Not only in our training but the products graduates produce for their communities is vital to us. We want our students to feel proud of their education and contribute back to their communities with quality products that people can appreciate and love. 

The long years of war and internal conflicts caused the loss of husbands, fathers, or brothers, which left no one to protect and provide shelters and foods for the families of Afghan widows, orphans, and women in chronic poverty. Often these women and children are considered as a burden to their families or relatives.

However, it was observed through the post-graduation surveys that many of the women who suffered from poverty now live a stable life and enjoy the personal financial income.  These results were achieved through the education and training we provided to these women through the six-month tailoring courses.  This project brought positive changes to the lives of many vulnerable women and children in Afghanistan. 

Comparing the current incomes of the graduates to their pre-enrollment incomes recorded, we can confidently state that our project brought significant improvement in their finance.  Most of them had no income before our training.  We successfully delivered the sustainability of the lives of the most vulnerable populations in the communities through our project implementation.

We expect four immediate outcomes from our program. One, increased knowledge of women in literacy and numeration. Two, increased financial stability through increased household income. Three, increased adoptions of safe hygiene practices. Four, increased adoptions of peacebuilding at home. The longterm impacts of our project are helped vulnerable communities to have sustainable sources of income, helped reduce the unemployment rate in the targeted communities, helped reduced home conflicts and violence through regular sessions of peacebuilding, and helped improve hygiene practices to reduce health complications and cost. 

We operate 7 community-based vocational training centers in 3 provinces in Afghanistan for widows, female orphans, and women in chronic poverty. 25 young Afghan men and women were hired and worked with us for years.  806 most vulnerable Afghan women have graduated from our program.  They were illiterate and hopeless, but now they can read and write and can count numbers. They built financial sustainability for their families through the tailoring business they started at home.  As a result,  4,334 family members and children are getting fed and going to school.

Currently, 200 students are graduating from our current 7 training centers annually. With the right support and budget, we can double the number with 4 additional community-based training centers in one year.  COVID19 has to be considered now.  All of our operations have been affected and changed.  We would need more spaces and more trainers to train the same number of students.  We were approved to reopen our training center in July by the Afghanistan government under the condition of social distance in classrooms and safety practices.  Within the next five years, we can expand our services to 10 provinces with at least 40 training centers and graduate 1,600 students annually.  That enables us indirectly to benefit approximately 8,000 family members, mostly children, with food and education annually.

Our one-year goal would be to establish 4 more training centers, which will add up to 11 training centers in total in four provinces.  We also plan to operate a sewing factory that will generate revenue for our operation. We are seeking companies in the U.S., manufacturing Afghanistan military uniforms.  They could potentially help us do the same thing in Afghanistan ourselves for the Afghanistan military. We have hundreds of expert tailors graduating annually from our program. Many of them will be more than willing to work with us.  We will create more jobs and opportunities for students. We are also seeking to obtain medical manufacturing license, so we can produce and provide uniforms to hospitals. 

In five years, we plan to expand our services to 10 provinces with a minimum of 4 training centers in each province. By this time, we should have regional offices established and added afterschool programs to all training centers for orphans and children in extreme poverty.  The afterschool program is to help children stay in school. Those children who are not in school can join the program to start their basic education.  We would also expect the sewing production to build a brand name in Afghanistan and produce quality products all Afghans can enjoy and be proud of. Right now, most goods are imported from China, Pakistan, Turkey, Korea, or other nations. 

Several barriers can hinder us from expanding our service or accomplish our goals. The security issue is, by far, the most serious barrier.  Taliban, ISIS, and other small and large militants are always active and are threatens to government as well as the lives of civilians.  

Corruption of government officials is another huge barrier we will face. There is no avoiding it.

Fundraising is a smaller yet significant part of the operation that we cannot ignore.  To expend our service to benefit the most needed populations, we must reach out to the remote villages in all 34 provinces. We will need to raise a significant amount of funding to be able to do this. 

As for the security concern, our best practice is to keep our training centers to the community-based level, which enables us to maintain a low profile.  We do not have facility names posted outside of our centers.  It is also essential to remain in contact and good relationships with the local government and law enforcement offices.  Their prompt response to our calls will be crucial in times of security needs.

As for corruption, we will not give ourselves into it.  We emphasize zero tolerance to corruption in our work in Afghanistan.  Corruption and bribing are two things we say no to.  We are clear to stay out of it even if it means a little longer time to do our work.  Afghanistan has been exposed to corruption too long, and people seem to accept it as their daily norm.  This is not the way we want to teach our young staff. As for the fundraising, we are approaching it in several ways. Proposal and grant writings, awards, fundraising through individuals, churches, organizations, and private companies, and revenue generation. We have established a sewing factory in Afghanistan to generate profit to fund our projects. It is in its infancy and needs a lot of help. We believe self-sustainability is essential. We emphasize our staff to be able to fund projects ourselves instead of always asking funds from the international funders.  These young Afghan leaders are smart and educated.  They are motivated and committed to our work. 

We are currently partnered with the Mennonite Central Committee. They have funded us for the last three years and extended their partnership three more years of funding support. As for the actual work in Afghanistan, we do not have any partners yet. 

We have a mixture of nonprofit and profit business model.  Our main work is in the nonprofit work, but to raise funds to achieve our work, we plan on generating revenue.  We are currently 100 % not-for-profit, but the revenue-generating model is always in our big plan.

We provide literacy education and tailoring training to Afghan women. We then give a tailor's business startup kit that includes ten essential items to start the business at home right away.  Among the items included in the kit are a brand new hand-cranked sewing machine and a woman tailor signboard. Then we encourage them to start the home tailoring business immediately upon graduation. We encourage them to promote their business through their neighbors, relatives, and friends. We encourage them to generate at least 60 USD per month.

We also encourage them to feed their children well and send them to school. This is a tremendous improvement to communities. These women were burdens to the communities, but are pride in their communities.  These women's children wandered around the streets begging or working for small changes, now they are in school, studying for a better future. 

We have been raising funds through sustainable donations, grants, one time gifts from individuals, churches, funding NGOs, and companies.  However, as I have briefly explained, we are working to establish a revenue-generating business model.   We registered a small sewing factory a year ago, and it is in development. We started the work at our apartment with borrowed machines sewing women's pants. We hired our graduates and worked together. Our work produced quality products, so the wholesalers loved our products. However, because the expensive fabric cost (Afghanistan imports all fabrics. There are no garment factories there.), we decided to put a hold on our work and re-strategize.

I am trying to get in contact with U.S. manufacturers who are producing Afghanistan military uniforms. One of their goals to find a factory in Afghanistan and help them do their work as a way for an effort to help the developing nation. We are a perfect fit for this opportunity. We will expand our work to medical uniforms and then to developing brands in Afghanistan. This will enable us to generate a substantial amount of funds inside the country. 

The most prominent funding organization is the Mennonite Central Committee. They are providing $45,000 a year for the next three years. The rest of the funds come from South Korea from individuals and small churches. They make up about $50,000 a year of funding. About $30,000 is raised additionally as one-time gifts from individuals in South Korea or the U.S.A. 

For us to expand as we planned for the next twelve, we would need to raise approximately $100,000.  Again we will seek grants and sustained donations from individuals and companies. The funds need to be raised by the end of the year. 

We do have yearly expense plans in an excel spreadsheet that  I can share. However, here is a brief list of a budget of expected expenses for the next 12 months.  Salaries & benefits for 25 staff in Afghanistan ($70,000), Goods and services, which include travel, food, communications, repair/maintenance, utility, supplies, and miscellaneous ($40,000), asset purchasing ($1,000), Staff training ($7,000). This comes out to $118,000. This is the total expected expense of the current operation. An additional fund of $50,000 needs to be raised for further expansion, as we planned above. 

I believe The Elevate Prize can create awareness of our work in Afghanistan, so we can expand our services to many more women and children in extreme poverty. This will provide additional opportunities for raising funds.  I am especially excited for a two year program where we have access to scholars and industry leaders for guidance and mentorship to elevate humanity in Afghanistan among women and children. Winning prize is an excellent way to cheer our staff in Afghanistan, as well.   The recognition of work by The Elevate Prize can also provide awareness of our work to the global donors and provide better security for our organization in Afghanistan as well. 

I do not have the specific names of potential partners yet.

We would like to build a presentation online such as the website, SNS marketing, etc.

We would like to build a better governance structure in Afghanistan.

We would like to provide higher quality capacity building training for our staff in Afghanistan.

We would like to partner with a fashion industry or clothing production company to help us build our factory to a brand name company.

Thank you.