Your Support in Action – 2012 results!

THANK YOU once again for your generosity and support this past year! Without you we would not be able to support life altering humanitarian work in Afghanistan. Often, the support you provide helps in immeasurable ways, in the hope YOU inspire, the dreams YOU allow to grow and the enthusiasm YOU spark. We are pleased to share the tangible ways your support has changed lives as well. Please see below for a listing of some of the ways you have helped through your support in 2012!

YOUR support:

  • Funded the building of 55 shelters for 330 people.
  • Provided before and after school classes in Tangi Saidan, Qaia Luqman and Reshkor.
  • Funded the scholarships for 10 street children to join the Aschiana program, getting them off the streets and into the classroom.
  • Supported one female resident for a residency program at Afshar Hospital.
  • Helped support the Children’s Support Center providing educational opportunities, psychological counseling and a safe home for children of women imprisoned in Afghanistan.
  • Provided funding for teacher training workshops, educational programs for street kids and outreach work to convince families to educate their girls.
  • Supported an early education center in Balk Province allowing 30 children to attend. Since its opening there has been 100% attendance and the meal that is provided is often the only and most nutritious meal the children will get all day.

It is never too late to get involved, join us in changing lives!

Khaled’s Corner:

Books and Movies

I am frequently asked what I am reading and watching. See below for books I am reading currently and enjoying tremendously as well as some recommended movies.

Recommended Films:

Monsiseur Lazhar: A very moving Canadian film (in French with subtitles) about an Algerian born substitute teacher, with a sorrowful past of his own, connecting with a classroom whose previous beloved teacher has committed suicide. The final five minutes are riveting and beautiful.

The Italian: A Russian film about a boy who runs away from an orphanage to find his natural mother. Could have been maudlin and mawkish, but it is beautifully handled with great sensitivity.

Polisse: This one is a punch in the gut. A French film about a squad of policemen working in a child abuse unit. The movie is really about the toll of the work on the lives of the policemen. Some of the most natural acting you will see in any film.

Looper: Ok, this is not my typical recommendation. But it’s a great action movie with a time travel subplot that went surprisingly unnoticed this year. Lots of twists and turns, and always clever and suspenseful.

Moonrise Kingdom: If you are a Wes Anderson fan, you will love this one. If you are not, you will still love it. The auteur’s latest, about a pair of twelve-year olds who fall in love and elope, is also his most accessible and mainstream movie in years.

Recommended reads:

The Tenth of December, by George Saunders: An eclectic short story collection full of surprises and at times surreal, dark humor. His prose is so fresh and so inventive, and his ‘point of entry’ into a story so inventive that you cannot fully appreciate his genius until you have re-read the stories, which I highly recommend.

Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace: A brilliant collection of essays from the late, great Wallace. The title essay and the one on David Lynch alone are worth the price of admission.

A death in Venice, and other stories, by Thomas Mann: Going back to a classic. Mann is a genius at worming into the minds of alienated, reserved, solitary creatures who are striving to hold their immense passions at bay.

Children of the Jacaronda Tree, by Sahar Delijani: This book will be published later this year, but I recommend you look it up, as it gives a chilling insider’s view into the lives of two generations damaged irrevocably by the tyranny of the Iranian regime.

Khaled Hosseini

© 2013 by Elena Seibert

Grantee Update: UNHCR report for the shelters YOU helped build is in!

As of the end of 2012, TKHF has provided funding for 414 shelters! In just 2012 alone 55 shelters were built. The impact of these shelters is astonishing; they allow over 2,400 people to have refuge from the harsh elements and unforgiving terrain in Afghanistan. Where once these women, children and families slept outside exposed to the elements, in holes dug in the ground, in substandard or bombed out buildings, now they have a home. Thank you for your support of our shelter program with the UNHCR. The impact you have had is hard to measure precisely. How can you measure the hope you have provided, the fear you have stemmed, the lives you have saved? Without you we would not be able to impact changes on this level for these families. We sincerely thank you and look forward to the year to come and the changes your support will inspire! Read the full UNHCR 2012 shelter report.

Shelter Program Results:

Year Donation Amount Total Shelters Total Individuals Served
2008 $100,000 71 426
2009 $145,722 102 612
2010 $122,875 80 480
2011 $175,423 106 636
2012 $110,325 55 330
2013 $654,345 414 2,484
Temporary housing in canvas tents

© UNHCR

Temporary housing in canvas tents

© UNHCR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Temporary housing in canvas tents © UNHCR

Completed shelters

© UNHCR

Completed shelters

© UNHCR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Completed shelters © UNHCR

TKHF welcomes Cheryl Jennings as an Honorary Advisory Board Member

Join us in welcoming Emmy Award winning news anchor Cheryl Jennings as an Honorary Advisory Board Member to our Foundation. We are incredibly proud to have someone of her stature and integrity support us in this way. Cheryl is weekday co-anchor of ABC7 News at 11:00 a.m. and anchor of ABC7 News at 5:00 p.m. She also files special assignment news reports and is the host of the community affairs program Beyond the Headlines. Recently, Cheryl moderated an event with Khaled at The Harker School.

In 2005 Cheryl co-founded Roots of Peace Children’s Penny Campaign in Marin County to de-mine playgrounds, soccer fields and schools in Afghanistan. Bay Area school children helped raise 50 million pennies to remove landmines in Afghanistan. The money has also helped build two schools there and repair four others. The program was honored by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Find out more about Cheryl and her work.

Cheryl Jennings

© Channel 7 News

abc KGO-TV

 

Are you compelled to act?

We have received many letters and emails over the years from students and teachers alike sharing how they have been impacted by reading one or both of Khaled’s novels.

We recently heard from an international student abroad who shared that he and his thirteen classmates were assigned The Kite Runner as part of their preparation for qualifications in AS Literature. While they were assigned one chapter each evening, Sumbul Ahmed read the entire novel in two days. He shared with us how he appreciated the perspective the novel provided, one that was different from what he had previously been exposed to.

We share this story because it gives a face to the many people we have heard from in the past and we feel honored to be able to provide an outlet for this passion and heartfelt desire to help through our SOS program.

We hope you will take action when you feel compelled, whether it is supporting the work we are doing or joining in another humanitarian cause. Make 2013 the year you make a difference. No situation is truly hopeless unless we first give up the hope that change can occur. Change in Afghanistan has occurred over these past few years and we remain hopeful that the country will continue to make strides towards peace, prosperity and most importantly providing safety and security for its most vulnerable people, women and children.

Sumbul Ahmed and his classmates

Sumbul Ahmed and his classmates

Where will Khaled be this summer?

We are frequently asked where Khaled’s next appearance will be in conjunction with the release of his new novel, And the Mountains Echoed. Please see below for the dates and locations where Khaled will be speaking. Don’t miss out on hearing him speak about his new novel and the work he is doing through his foundation!

And the Mountains Echoed – Book Tour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Khaled Hosseini
And the Mountains Echoed

© 2013 by Elena Seibert

Open Heart, a documentary featuring EMERGENCY was nominated for an Oscar!

We are proud to announce that one of our grantees, EMERGENCY USA, has been featured in a new documentary that was nominated for an Oscar. While we were hoping they would win, we know that the filmmakers have brought much needed attention to the work EMERGENCY is doing in Africa and around the world.

Open Heart is the story of eight Rwandan children who leave their families behind and embark on a life-or-death journey to receive high-risk open-heart surgery in Africa’s only free-of-charge, state-of-the-art cardiac hospital, the Salam Center run by Emergency, an Italian NGO. Their heart valves, damaged and weakened by rheumatic heart disease, which develops from untreated childhood strep throat, leave them lethargic and weak. Some of the children have only months to live.

During their cross-continental journey, Open Heart reveals the intertwined endeavors of Dr. Emmanuel Rusingiza, Rwanda’s lone, overworked public cardiologist, and Dr. Gino Strada, the Salam Center’s head surgeon. As one of Emergency’s founders, he must fight not just for the children’s lives but for the tenuous financial future of the hospital.

While heart disease is often associated with the excesses of Western nations, severe cardiac diseases requiring surgery are extremely prevalent in resource-poor Sub-Saharan Africa. *Information from www.openheartfilm.com.

Find out where you can see a screening of this compelling and incredibly moving film. CBS news featured EMERGENCY in one of their segments. Watch it now.

Emergency

 

Thank YOU for changing the lives of 35 families in Afghanistan!

We would like to thank each and every one of you for contributing to our Stop the Suffering campaign. To date, since we launched the campaign in November 2012, we have raised over $35k! With our match, and the current shelter cost of $2k, this allows us to fund 35 homes for 210 people. YOU have made a difference; YOU have shifted the scales in immeasurable ways for these families. They will be able to build homes that will shelter them from the brutal biting elements and provide a sense of pride and hope for the future.

You can STILL make a difference, you can SAVE a life. Please join us in ending this needless suffering.

Change conditions for one family, one home at a time. Just look at how great the impact of your gift will be:

  • Just $80 provides shelter tool kits for four families;
  • $160 provides shelter tool kits for eight families;
  • $447 provides the doors and windows to complete a shelter;
  • $2,000 makes it possible for a family to construct their home from start to finish and begin a new life with renewed hope and safety.
Shelter

A beneficiary family who finally have a home they can call their own!

Temporary Shelter

Temporary shelters that do little to protect families from the elements.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All pics © UNHCR

Read our campaign letter.

Donate button

 

Have you seen the US cover for Khaled’s new book?

We are pleased to share the newly released US cover for And the Mountains Echoed! Look for it at a bookseller near you on May 21st.

And the Mountains Echoed

Khaled Hosseini

© 2013 by Elena Seibert