By: Jim Taylor

Improving lives on the far side of the world


It’s a long way from Canada to Afghanistan. You’d hardly expect events twelve-and-a-half time zones away to affect a ten-year-old girl in Canada. And you’d be even less likely to expect that a ten-year-old girl in Canada could affect events in Afghanistan.

        You’d be wrong.

        Last November, Lake Country mom Jamie Podmorrow was trying to persuade her friends to buy tickets for a speech by Sally Armstrong.

        Armstrong, an Amnesty International award winner, a member of the Order of Canada, documentary filmmaker, teacher, author, and human rights activist, wrote an article about the Taliban’s oppression of women of Afghanistan, while she was editor-in-chief of Homemakers magazine in 1997.

        The article struck a chord. More than 9,000 readers wrote letters to the magazine. Armstrong went on the lecture circuit.

        When Jamie Podmorrow had difficulty talking friends into attending, she took her daughter Alaina instead.



Making a commitment

  Until that point, Alaina had been a typical Canadian youngster. In many ways, she still is. She loves playing with her friends. She bursts into giggles. When her mom says something typically mom-ish, Alaina’s jaw drops; she stares at her mother with goggle-eyed incredulity.

        But ask a question about Afghanistan, and she’s suddenly serious. “What really struck me,” she says about Armstrong’s lecture, “was about girls not getting an education. I thought about what life would be like for me and my friends if we couldn’t get an education.”

        She brushes a wisp of straggling blonde hair out of her face. “I could picture in my head a place where there were kids like me, but instead of happiness it was pain.”

        Jamie recalls, “On the way home, we talked about what life would be like for women in Afghanistan. Wearing burkas, having to have a man speak for you, read for you. When she came home, she sat on the end of the bed and told her Dad all about what she had learned.”

        During her speech, Armstrong had said, “The worst thing you can do is nothing.”

Alaina told her parents, “I want to do something.”

        They decided they would try to raise $750 to provide a teacher for Afghan girls for one year.



Making a difference

        With support from teachers at Davidson Road Elementary School, she started selling donuts and recycling bottles and cans.

        But that wasn’t enough. So Alaina talked to her friends. Her friends talked to their parents. They piggybacked a silent auction onto a potluck dinner organized by the local Rotary club.

        “We raised almost $2000 in one night,” Jamie marvels. “And then Rotary matched that, so we were able to pay for five teachers, instead of just one!”

A while after, Alaina decided that a one-shot effort wasn’t good enough.

        She explains, “You have to be – what’s the word, mom? – committed to it. It can’t be just a thing you do and then forget about.”

        There was already an organization called Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan founded by Janice Eisenhauer and Carolyn Reicher of Calgary. They too had heard of the human rights violations Afghan women faced. In 1997, they began to explore how Canadian women could help Afghan women.

        Ten years later, CW4AW has 14 chapters and affiliated groups in Canada with hundreds of members and supporters working together on behalf of Afghan women.

        Under that umbrella, Alaina and her friends formed Canada’s first chapter of Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan (LW4LW).

        By the end of this month, there may be eight other chapters of Little Women.



Changing lives

 Amazingly, it seems to be working. Nationally syndicated columnist Richard Gwyn reported an Environics survey in Afghanistan.

        Surveys are always questionable. It’s too easy to slant questions to get desired answers. Surveys conducted in a distant country, in other languages, are especially suspect.

        But this one, says Gwyn, “has a ring of veracity about it.”

        Some 1800 Afghans were questioned. By other Afghans, in their own language. Men interviewed men; women interviewed women.

        The interviewers reported that very few respondents showed any sign of feeling intimidated or scared. The rate of response was an astounding 85 per cent.

        The views were not necessarily what the Canadian government wants to hear. There were some unflattering reactions against the Canadian military. In some regions, Afghans favoured a coalition government that included the Taliban.

        But there was a mood of cautious optimism. The two primary reasons given were improved security, and reconstruction and rebuilding.

        The third-largest cause for optimism was a surprise, though: “Schools for girls have opened.” Slightly further down the scale came two other women’s issues: “Women have more freedom,” and “Women can now work.”

        In Richard Gwyn’s words, “Those three responses, added together, constitute the largest single reason for optimism expressed by ordinary Afghans.”



Doing something

   The website for Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan declares, “There has been remarkable progress made in Afghanistan. This girl [in picture] has returned to school. Her mother is able to see a doctor. But most women still have little access to adequate healthcare. Children are without books and teachers. Many women and children fear for their safety.”

        During Sally Armstrong’s speech, Alaina Podmorrow asked a question: “Is there any peace in Afghanistan?”

        After the speech, Alaina went forward to get a copy of Armstrong’s book, Veiled Threat.

“Are you the girl who asked that question?” Armstrong asked, as she signed the book.

        Then, Alaina recalls, Armstrong added, “You’ll be doing big things some day.”

        Her brow furrows in thought. “Maybe that’s what I’m doing now,” she says.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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