Meet Farida!

We are proud to introduce Farida, one of the street children we are sponsoring through our grantee Trust In Education (TIE).  At 14, Farida was working on the streets of Kabul in an attempt to support her family.  It was a daunting task, as she has four sisters and a brother.  Farida lost her father eleven years ago in a rocket attack and, as a result, her income was needed to supplement what her brother earned as a shop cleaner.  Now, through TIE’s program, she is able to attend school.  She is no longer working on the streets.  She can now spend her days in the classroom, studying and planning for a brighter future.  She is intelligent, maintains good grades, and works very hard in school.  Her hope is to become an engineer one day.  We are incredibly honored to be able to sponsor her education and hope that one day she can realize her dream of becoming an engineer.

    Farida      Farida

  ©TIE           ©TIE

30 shelters have been funded in 2013

We have provided over $64,000 to the UNHCR this year to help support the shelter program.  Using the current shelter cost of $2,100*, this will result in the funding of 30 shelters!  Please help us get to 60 by the end of the year.  These shelters provide more than a home and a sense of pride.  To homeless refugees, they provide life saving protection from the unforgiving elements, the bitter cold of winter, and the oppresive heat of summer.  Please help us make a meaningful and life altering difference in the lives of homeless Afghan refugees.

See the impact of your gift:

  • $80 provides shelter tool kits for four families.
  • $160 provides shelter tool kits for eight families.
  • $465 provides doors and windows for one shelter.
  • $2,100 builds one shelter to house 6 people.

 

*-Shelter costs increase slightly each year due to several factors including foreign exchange rate and material cost fluctuations.

Temporary shelters

© UNHCR Temporary shelters

 

 Completed home through the shelter program

© UNHCR Completed home through the shelter program

 

What has been happening with SOS

SOS logo

Welcome Columbus Signature Academy

huskies

Please welcome Columbus Signature Academy School, from Columbus, Indiana to our SOS program.  Ms. Heather Hester’s Senior English class will be reading The Kite Runner and doing a service learning project for the foundation.  They foster a project based learning school environment that focuses not only on building and refining 21st century skills, but also on instilling a sense of civic responsibility in their students and faculty.  Welcome Columbus Signature Academy School!

And The Mountains Echoed Free Curriculum

We will be featuring curriculum for Khaled’s latest novel, And the Mountains Echoed, on our SOS site by June.  Don’t miss this amazing opportunity to implement both an educational and service learning component in your study and enjoyment of Khaled’s latest novel!

And the Mountains Echoed

Thank you to our SOS members for their amazing SOS fundraising efforts!

We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Edgewood High School in Edgewood, Maryland for submitting a donation through the SOS program!  This year alone, they have donated $4,000.  We are so proud of the students and all of their hard work! A special thank you to Ms. Laura Childs as well for the stewardship and guidance she has provided to her students during their SOS fundraiser.

Thank you also to Sidhart Krishnamurthi from Harker School in San Jose, California for raising over $2,000 for the SOS program!  Sid took our cause to heart and raised a significant amount of money, proving that the power behind one person’s dedication can create an enthusiasm in others that results in real change!

Join SOS today!

SOS logo

Khaled is officially on tour!

Don’t miss this opportunity to see Khaled and hear him speak.  We are pleased to announce that our foundation video will be shared at the venues and he will of course be on hand to answer any questions you may have about his writing or humanitarian work.  For those of you in the Bay Area, we will be at the local events to sell our stunning handcrafted jewelry, purses and bookmarks.  Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear Khaled speak and support the foundation at the same time!

TKHF will sell products at:

Santa Cruz – June 2nd

Berkeley – June 23rd

San Francisco – June 24th

Khaled’s tour schedule.

Khaled Hosseini       And the Mountains Echoed

© Elena Seibert

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