Winter in Afghanistan: Shelter Now wants to help vulnerable ethnic groups
The international Christian aid organization Shelter Now urgently needs additional support for its center for the deaf in the Afghan capital Kabul. The German Shelter Now director Matthias Stechert explained that new donors are needed in order to continue running the facility for around 40 students, as a major donor has pulled out. At the center, children and young adults receive education in sign language.
Project Manager Johannes Nielen was the first Shelter Now representative from Germany to travel through Afghanistan since the Taliban took power in 2021. In Kabul, Nielen visited the deaf center, which has existed since 2005: “Many students reported that their parents cannot communicate with them or forbid them to use sign language.” As a result, they see the school as their “second home” because they feel accepted here.
Among the 15 schools for the deaf in Afghanistan, the center run by Shelter Now is the only one that also accepts adult men and women, said Nielen. A number of young men remain “stuck” in the center even after finishing school because they cannot find work. Therefore, the relief organization would also like to offer vocational training courses in the future.
Stechert and Nielen expressed their concern about the increasingly dramatic food situation in Afghanistan. According to the World Food Program (WFP), one in four Afghans do not know where their next meal will come from. According to the WFP, a total of 44.5 million people live in the Central Asian country. According to Nielen, minorities such as the semi-nomadic Kuchis he visited, who live in simple tents isolated from the rest of the population, are particularly affected by the hardship. Shelter Now had helped them to increase their flocks of sheep through a microcredit project.
The Chalou ethnic group is also on the margins of society, often left empty-handed in official relief distributions. After their settlements of huts on the outskirts of Kabul were bulldozed and the people had to move elsewhere, local Shelter Now employees made new contact to help them as winter approached.
Brunswick, November 13, 2024