January 2006
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Women's circles hook up
Visit of two Afghan students spurs development project
By Bonnie L. Petty
Published in the North Bay Progressive, February, 2006
Two young women from Afghanistan, stood before a group of 60 women, gathered in the Santa Rosa home of Connie Codding, and spoke about life in their home country during and after the rule of the Taliban regime.
Both Alean Haider and Dewa Mangal, currently attending Montclair State University in New Jersey, came to Sonoma County in January due to the efforts of a few local women through their affiliations with various women's groups. For these two women, both in their twenties, the changes they have experienced in the last few years -- largely due to the work of the women's groups or "circles" in both countries -- have been a testament, in Haider's words, "to the power of women."
It was because Haider learned of a scholarship from the women of the Sonoma County Women's Council that she is studying in the US today.
The intertwining of several women and their respective groups had facilitated Haider's and Mangal's eventual visit to Sonoma County. Afghans4Tomorrow, a national organization of Afghan Americans, represented by Asma Eschen of San Rafael, collaborated with the Women's Council to bring the girls here this year.
Women for a Better World worked with the Women's Council to host the girls and publicize their visit. Stephanie Hiller, founding director, talked about the experience of "seeing the web form" as groups of women begin to connect across continents and cultures to find ways to help "build a global women's movement for peace." This meeting of the Women's Council, with members of the No Name group, was just such an example of connection.
One key group, Peace X Peace (pronounced: Peace by Peace, see www.peacexpeace.org), is dedicated to linking up women's circle. Founded by a Washington DC woman named Patricia Smith Melton in January of 2002 in response to 9-11, Peacexpeace is the result of two days discussion by a circle of powerful women who came together to consider this question: What is peace and how can women be empowered to create it?
One step was to build a Global Network of partner circles. By mid October of 2005, Melton's organization built a network of over 350 women's circles in 46 nations. The first partners were the Sonoma County Women's Council and the Women's Peace Circle in Kabul.
Once this connection was mande, "we began trying to find some way to help," said Hiller.
Haider is a member of the Kabul Peace Circle. She became the liaison between the two circles because she she had access to email (through her job at the United Nations office in Kabul). Haider had risked her life under the Taliban, clandestinely teaching other girls and women in her home. She earnestly wanted a college education.
The Women's Council learned of the scholarship offered by The Initiative to Educate Afghan Women (www.ieaw.org) through Marsha MacColl, a member of Afghans4Tomorrw.
Based on this new partnership, the nonprofit Women for a Better World was later formed, and proposed the Afghan Women's Empowerment Project to "help Afghan women establish income generating projects through a micro-lending program."
It was Mervis Reissig who met Susan Moore through their activities with Progressive Democrats of America; when Reissig told her of the upcoming vist and the project, she and Connie Codding invited them to make a presentation "because it was obvious, there was such a need…" said Moore .
Moore and Codding are founders of an association of influential women that has no name and no rules, Moore told NBP. The women come together for informational evenings. They are not a fund-raising group, but individually the women contribute to the community in many ways.
It was clear that the women assembled were very moved by the Afghan women's reports.
"The war destroyed everything...social life, economic life…everything," explained Dewa Mangal. Relating her story of her family's flight to Pakistan to escape the Taliban, Mangal explained how the micro-lending project could make a significant difference to families and communities trying to rebuild their country after 25 wars of war culminating in the US invasion. Mangal's family returned to Afghanistan a year and a half ago, and, discovering the IEAW scholarship on the Internet, she was able to come to the United States to study at Montclair State.
Both women intend to return to Afghanistan to seek positions of leadership and help revitalize their country. In the meantime, both see the micro-lending project as a step to rebuild the local economy and offer hope to women and their communities there.
The program would establish five working circles of women in the Kabul Peace Circle, each with ten members. Loans of $1,000 will be offered to one member of each circle who appears ready to undertake a small business, whether baking bread, raising bees, or writing a book. The loan will enable her to purchase some of the supplies she needs to get started. When she pays back her loan, another woman may receive it.
And it works. Examples of micro-lending all over the world show that this type of program provides motivation and support along with the startup money. Members of the circle are motivated to support the woman who receives the loan because her success means the loan will eventually be made available to her. And women pay loans back.
Mervis Reissig, a member and Director of Women for a Better World, said that in places like Kabul, where there is little work and few products produced locally, efforts to "help women build their own economy, helps to build their communities."
Stephanie Hiller ended her talk by quoting Zaina Salhib, Founder of Women for Women International: "When you uplift women, you uplift the family, when you uplift the family, you uplift the community, when you uplift the community, you uplift the nation."
"That's what we're trying to do here," Hiller said.
The meeting ended with expressions of support and generous contributions to launch the project.
Bonnie Petty is a regular contributor to the Progressive.
To help, contact Stephanie Hiller at editor@awakenedwoman.com. Donations may be made at the web site: http://www.awakenedwoman.com/wbw.htm or to Women for a Better World, P. O. Box 1113, Occidental, CA 95465.