Mark Manley

NGO and NonProfit: Afghan Womens Education Center (AWEC): - AWEC Outreach Program

As young as five or six years old, they are pressed into the workforce to earn income for their families, peddling on the street or working in the shops. They are the street children of Kabul. In this city of 3 millon people you see them everywhere, darting between cars in the city traffic, trying to sell chewing gum to exasperated drivers, shining shoes in the street, or selling phone cards or plastic bags, anything to help provide for their families. They are significant contributors to their families' welfare and in some cases are the primary breadwinners. The economic realities of trying to survive in Afghanistan means that their parents and the shopkeepers who employ them are dependent on child labor and income to get by. It also means they are often the ones most resistant to the idea of these children leaving the streets to go to school. AWEC seeks to address these issues through their outreach program , going into the homes and neighborhoods of these children to work directly with their parents, extended families, and the shopkeepers that employ them to provide the children a chance to break out of the cycle of illiteracy and poverty that pervades the country.

Children at the Zohr Abab Wasi encampment on the outskirts of Kabul. Approximately 54 families settled here after returning from refugee camps in Pakistan. Many of the roughly 50 children in the camp work at a nearby produce market, cleaning stalls and loading produce to be trucked into central Kabul. AWEC has been doing active outreach in the camp, meeting with families and providing literacy training to the children.
   
Jawid Ahmad is a social worker and outreach worker for AWEC. He has bright eyes and a gentle, sly smile. The children gravitate to him.
   
A young boy at the Parwantwo Camp, home to approximately 500 returnees from Pakistan refugee camps. AWEC is active in the camps, establishing basic health; and hygene training and literacy training for children in the camp.
     
  
   
  
     
  
At Zohr Abab Wasi, this family has given AWEC permission to use their small one room home as a classroom twice a week, to teach basic literacy to the children in the camp.
   
  
     
  
   
  
Many of these children work in a produce market, often in exchange for fruits and vegtables to help feed their families. Many adult family members in these camps have been disabled or killed over the last several years of conflict. As a result, children become a significant part of the workforce, sometimes having to be the primary breadwinner within a family.