Frida's Notebook: Update on the orphanage

Boys at the Ghor orphanage in temporary rented buildings, January 2007

A few updates on child rights and child protection issues in Ghor - including the story of the orphanage which some of you have been following here for more than six months.

Following my coordination meetings last week we got a copy from War Child UK of an excellent report on orphanages and children's day centres in Ghor, based on an assessment done several years ago. The report was incredibly useful in that it identified the key problems facing these institutions and the children either living in or attending them. It also set out recommendations based on best-practice and the strategic priorities of the Government of Afghanistan in this sector. Using this report and the advice from the child protection experts I consulted with last week I was able to give some suggestions to the Development Advisor who has worked so hard to pull together the funding and support needed to get the orphanage in Ghor a new building.

As a result the project to construct a new building for the orphanage has been amended to build a more versatile building (one that could be used as a day-centre as well as a residence) - this allows greater flexibility for the future should the Department of Labour and Social Affairs manage (with support of child protection and child rights agencies) to implement the Government preferred approach of de-institutionalising children and assisting them to return to their families wherever possible.

The project is now referred to as construction of a children's centre - not an orphanage - since the hope is that a wide range of child protection and child welfare activities can be run out of this building.

PARSA (see my previous post on this subject for contact details) has agreed to be the implementing partner for the construction, on the understanding that they will contribute their expertise and experience in order to promote child welfare throughout the project implementation.

On the subject of PARSA - one commenter on my previous post asked whether they were still active, because the website address I gave was to a site which had not been updated recently. I can confirm they remain active, as their involvement in this project shows. They are a small organisation that is run on passion and volunteerism so matters like updating websites might fall through the slats.

Update: Thanks to Home in Kabul for letting me know that PARSA has a new website - explaining why the link I had provided was out of date. Home in Kabul also needs to get the credit for being the starting point for this whole process - she sent me an email from PARSA executive director Marnie Gustavson about orphanages in Afghanistan, which I forwarded to the woman driving this project and we went from there. Thanks HiK, I hope you'll make it up to Ghor to see what you had a hand in creating one day soon.

On a related note, you might remember the IDP camp where I met Ali, the 10 year old boy who is deaf. The construction company building the new children's centre has signed a contract with the IP providing that they will give first preference for labour to the men in the IDP camp. Since the children's centre is being constructed very near to the IDP camp this should work we for everyone.

While we are on the subject of Ali - a friend helped me get hold of a sign-language text book and teaching instructions which are now being used by a teacher from within the IDP community to try to tech Ali Afghan sigh-language. I suspect this is going to prove to be difficult without the teacher receiving any training, so we are still working on getting him into a training course in Herat province. But for the moment a start is being made, for the first time in his life, on education for Ali.

So this Friday morning I can feel like my efforts have had a positive effect these past few weeks. Time to curl up with Harry Potter and a big cup of coffee and relax for a few hours!