World Vision’s Work in Afghanistan

These two schoolgirls are on their way to a World Vision-sponsored school in Afghanistan. Between 2004 and 2006, there was a 98 per cent increase in girls’ attendance at schools supported by World Vision.
Photo: Mary Kate MacIsaac.

More than six years after the Taliban regime was toppled, the people of Afghanistan still face serious obstacles to peace and development. Widespread poverty, persistent conflict and a harsh landscape make life difficult for ordinary Afghans—especially women and girls.

World Vision has worked in Afghanistan since 2001, offering food aid along with education, health and agricultural programs in the northwestern region of the country. World Vision’s programs benefit more than 838,411 people. At this time, child sponsorship is not offered in Afghanistan.

Current Needs
In Afghanistan, more women die in childbirth than almost anywhere else in the world. The maternal mortality rate of 1,600 women per 100,000 births is the world’s second highest, after Sierra Leone. In Canada, only six women per 100,000 births die due to complications.

Harmful traditional practices such as early marriage, along with taboos against male physicians attending to women, have exacerbated the country’s mortality rate of both women and children. Every year, a reported 370,000 children under the age of five die annually.

Education
The UN estimates that 1.7 million girls, who were denied an education under the Taliban, have returned to formal learning since 2001. World Vision’s Food for Education program encourages school enrollment by providing families who lack adequate food with rice, lentils and oil when they send their children to school.

The program helps improve the nutrition of school-aged children and their families while ensuring that the next generation—particularly girls—receives an education. Between 2004 and 2006, the Food for Education program saw a 98 per cent increase in girls’ attendance at schools supported by World Vision.

Other key aspects of this program include the following:

5,330 teachers provided with training in an effort to improve the quality of education;
41 new schools, which include instruction on health, hygiene and landmine awareness.

Health
World Vision’s midwife training program prepares women to provide prenatal, delivery and postnatal care to pregnant women in their villages and towns, helping to lower Afghanistan's maternal and infant mortality rates.

The two-year program provides students with classroom instruction as well as on-site training at a regional hospital in western Afghanistan. Since 2004, 142 women have graduated from the program, with an additional 60 students currently enrolled.

As part of their training, students also learn to feed and care for premature infants in the hospital's neonatal unit, also funded by World Vision. A total of 6,912 infants received care from July 2007 to June 2008. The unit also serves as a clinical site for student midwives to practice care of newborns.

Food
World Vision not only distributes food rations, but also strives to boost food security among communities that were devastated by several years of drought. World Vision provides families with seeds, fertilizer and basic tools to re-establish farms. Facilitating crop diversification and creating new markets through farm cooperatives have helped some 10,000 farmers.

Only 35 per cent of Afghans in cities and 19 per cent in rural areas have access to clean water. Through cash for work activities, World Vision has constructed a rain catchment well that serves 1,300 families (7,800 individuals) in three villages where World Vision operates.

To learn more about the lives of young girls in Afghanistan, visit our audio photo gallery on child brides in the country.