Dear Friend,
We apologize for the delay in updating you about the progress in our work in Afghanistan. We have been extremely overloaded with additional work of adjusting ourselves to the new situation and developing the most effective way of continuing and expanding our work in Afghanistan. The good news is that now we are active in 22 locations in 9 provinces with various social, educational, and entertaining activities for hundreds of children implemented mostly by our youth team leaders.
MMCC´s Herat Center: Our Herat center has become a source of hope and fun for hundreds of children, especially girls. This center, with your financial support, keeps creating a beautiful, joyful, productive, and healing environment for children, especially girls. Here you can see some photos and read a newly published article from Charlie Faulkner, of “The Times” who visited our Herat center: Circus School Gives Afghan Girls Laughter In Dark Times: https://mmccglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Times-scaled.jpg
Youth Network: Besides the very successful Herat center´s activities, we now facilitate, supervise, and support 21 super active youth team leaders in 9 provinces who are running weekly social circus activities for almost 1000 children. The 9 provinces are Kabul, Nangarhar, Bamyan, Khost, Herat, Laghman, Balkh, Ghor, and Konar. The activities include various social circus and social games as well as different arts and social skills. The 21 team leaders independently work closely in and with their own local communities and are supervised and mentored by our higher management.
Championships & Competitions: Neither we nor probably anyone else would have imagined that it could be possible to gather 60 children and youth champions from across the country for a 6-day circus festival in this new era of Afghanistan. Despite the challenging conditions, this was a magnificent week for all of the children, youth, and staff to reunite and celebrate their National Festival and Championships again. First, our 16 team leaders organized regional juggling and jump rope championships in 8 provinces during August, and then the winners came to Kabul for the National Championship and Festival. Due to the current political situation juggling competitions for the girls were instead held in our Herat center while in Kabul 2 days of the festival were dedicated to girls from the Kabul IDP camps. More than 200 girls thereby participated separately in both Juggling and Jump Rope competitions.
Creativity in Emergency: Children solve some of the new problems of lack of equipment through their creativity. Many of our friends used to visit us in Afghanistan and brought different circus equipment and especially juggling balls and clubs. Now as we are almost totally isolated, the kids and the youth leaders, and even smaller girls from the IDP camps have started to make their own equipment (attached photos). The team leaders make “Made In Afghanistan” juggling equipment and we also tailor "Made In Afghanistan" parachutes for children's social games.
Winter on the way: We are now preparing for the winter by providing and distributing winterization packages which include food and warm clothes as well. We are so grateful for all the sponsors in particular those monthly donors who make it possible for us to plan ahead with confidence. We hope more people join our “Sharing” campaign, especially as monthly donors to help many more children and families in this coming winter. We hope to bring more food and fun to many more children and families with your help in spreading the word and sharing this report and this link: www.globalgiving.org/projects/Sharing in your network and on your social media.
MMCC continues & sustains its operations on Afghan hands with a new strategy by supporting the youth to continue activities and keep being a source of joy & fun for millions of children & youth.
Thanks for your support and your generosity especially in these difficult times.
Spreading the word and sharing this report and the "BackToLife" link helps us to do much more and much better for many more children: www.globalgiving.org/projects/BackToLife
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