Gallery of students work to celebrate Peace Day

Today is a very special day - UN International Day Of Peace.

And to celebrate, Jeremy Gilley, has set up an organisation called Peace One Day - the idea behind it is this:

"To us, 21 September is a 24 hour-long platform for life-saving activities around the world and an opportunity for individuals - particularly young people - to become involved in the peace process. 21 September is the UN International Day of Peace, a day of global ceasefire and non-violence: Peace Day."

Read more here: Peace One Day website

Our motto is Peace Through Education, so we are delighted to present this gallery of work from the Afghan refugee children whose education we support in Quetta, Pakistan.

The work speaks for itself and we hope you will be moved to keep in touch with us - we are small and friendly and would love to meet you!

We want to tell the world about our amazing and dedicated students who believe that educating themselves is the path to peace. So please send a link to this page to your friends, befriend us on Facebook www.facebook.com/trustsulha follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/trustsulha or email us via info@trustsulha.org.uk

We are always busy finding ways to support our schools. On Saturday, September 18th, we held a Tea and Trinkets sale that raised £486.94 (amazing, thanks all!) and we are now preparing for our major annual fundraiser, Dance For Peace, which takes place at the Playhouse Theatre, Whitstable on Saturday, October 2nd. We are currently revamping our new website and finally...

...to coincide with Peace One Day, we have launched a campaign called Change In A Jar. Its easy, we give you one of our jars (see above!), you kindly fill it with loose change, then return it to us or contact us for our bank details, pay it in and every penny will change a life. If you live far away, you can always request stickers for your own jar and we will post them to you.

But enough! We are here for the Peace One Day 2010 Trust Sulha gallery and we hope you enjoyed it. Let us know what you think...

Open publication - Free publishing - More theatre

Why we need friends - Refugee Week 2010

Well, it seems like a long time since this photograph was taken...

That was me in May 2002 when I first went to the Afghan refugee camps of Quetta, Pakistan.

On the left is my friend Ali, translating for Abdul, the older gentleman in the centre, who was urgently telling me why education is the answer to so many problems in Afghanistan. I have never forgotten him and what he told me about his life and his hopes for the future.

Peering between them is M Haris - a dear friend, the son of Jamilla, the woman who started this whole journey for me.

Jamilla is an amazing woman - an Afghan who, with her wonderful husband Nabi, fled the fighting in Afghanistan and took her family to Quetta, Pakistan. There she found a burning desire to educate her nation's children while they lived as refugees and without any backing or facilities opened a school.

Eight years on and Trust Sulha - my small non-profit organisation which began in 2006 - is going well and growing by the day. We support the education of Jamilla's students and the students of another fantastic woman, Rahema Sherzhad. Between them they have around 2,000 students.

Our motto is Peace Through Education.

If you want to know more about how Trust Sulha came to be then please click here to read a piece I wrote for the Safe World For Women website - thanks to them for their continued support.

One of the things I am most pleased about is that this week FOTS was created.
FOTS stands for Friends of Trust Sulha.
We are a committee of six (so far!) who aim simply to raise more and more money for Trust Sulha.

Scroll down to read about our students in their own words and you'll see why they deserve all the support we can give them.

Our first aim is to approximately double our fundraising to £5,000 per year so that we can apply for Charity Commission Status. This will make further fundraising easier.

Having FOTS means the world to me because sometimes there have been moments when there seemed to be so much to do for Trust Sulha that the huge list was overwhelming! Not that I've ever been completely alone. Family and friends support me wonderfully of course, we have some super kind supporters and some super kind strangers who help us too. But to have a group that meets regularly to share the jobs like event organising, creating partnerships between the schools in Pakistan and UK schools, applying for grants etc is magic.

I think that together, the FOTS can make more of a difference and I'll be posting about our progress here. If you want to help Trust Sulha in any way please email info@trustsulha.org.uk

This week is Refugee Week and next year we'll make sure that we organise a special event to highlight the situation for the world's displaced people (that was one of things that fell off my list!). But there are plenty of events going on, especially this one in London tomorrow (June 20th World Refugee Day)and simple acts you can do to show solidarity with people far from home.

But if you could just one thing now, please tell your friends about Trust Sulha. We are small and friendly, so do get in touch. Follow us on Twitter and fan us on Facebook. We'll be delighted to meet you...

Thanks, Marnie

Some work from our students

YOU CAN CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO GET A CLOSER LOOK...

This picture, below, is by Shoghula. She heard this story of a nine-year-old girl who was abducted, raped, then exchanged for a fighting dog in Kunduz. Obviously this terrible and frightening story made a big impression on Shoghula, who saw it on the news, which is why she has drawn this image.
Thanks Shoghula.



This picture, below, and accompanying text is by Saweeda. Saweeda wishes to see her country become a good place, which is why she drew this anti-heroin poster.
Thanks Saweeda.



This picture is from a young man, Asad. The picture shows how Afghan refugees are so poor and how, as they are going about their daily routines, they see Pakistani children going to schools and they feel so disappointed about their own lives.
Thanks Asad.



This, below, is by Ayesha.
Ayesha says she heard this story from her father and decided she wanted to write it down. In the future she wants to write more stories.
Thanks Ayesha!

In good news...

...I have heard today that a friend is arranging a Quiz Night in aid of Trust Sulha at the end of April. Wow - thanks Emma!
Also that our annual fundraiser Dance For Peace will take place on October 2nd at the Playhouse Theatre, Whitstable.
It will be the third time we've put this show on with some fabulous local dance schools who kindly give their time. It's always an exciting and emotional night.
Pictures from last year's show will be uploaded soon, so keep coming back...

Update on registering as a charity

After quite a bit of research, some phone calls and meetings, I am sorry to report that I feel it is unlikely that Trust Sulha will be able to apply to be registered by the Charity Commission - yet!
The reason for this, is that you have to have an annual income of £5,000 to apply.
Of course if anyone reading this has had a different experience and has applied successfully without reaching this threshold then I would love to hear from you via info@trustsulha.org.uk
I thought we just had to cross that £5,000 threshold once, hence my optimism! Sadly not.
Looking on the bright side though, this gives us a new goal - we have to get up to this amount. we have to raise £5,000 a year! And we all like goals don't we!
So I'm contacting our friends and supporters today to see if we can create a committee that can start looking into new avenues of funding.
One avenue which I feel is worth exploring would be that of getting UK schools involved and raising funds for specific classes - a sort of twinning between students here and students there.
I'm always shied away from this as I felt schools wouldn't want to get involved if we weren't a registered charity, but I'm throwing caution to the wind now. The worst that can happen is that they all say no - and then we'll only be in the same position as we are now, and no worse off...
After all, Jamilla and Rahema didn't know if it would work when they opened their schools, they just went for it. So in that spirit we shall do the same.
So! Onwards and upwards and if you know of a school that you think might like to get involved then please do contact us.
Also, please do contact us if you think you can undertake a monthly Standing Order to Trust Sulha. Just £2 per month would, over the course of a year, pay a teacher's salary for a month.

New Year - New Goals for Trust Sulha

Happy New Year everyone!

Trust Sulha wishes all our students, teachers, their family and friends a good year - full of health, happiness, peace, joy and education.
Here in the UK, I have some New Year's resolutions for Trust Sulha...

1. To apply for full Charity Commission status and hopefully be successful
2. To fully utilise our Charity Commission status to raise more money and educate more young Afghan refugees in Pakistan
3. To produce our annual show Dance For Peace for the third year
4. To continue to publish the views and stories of our students here on our blog
5. To create partnerships between our students in Pakistan and students here in the UK - to increase understanding between these two groups of young people
6. To continue to use this blog and Twitter and other media to further understanding of the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan and what the future may hold

Keep checking back here to see how we are getting on with these resolutions and once agaon - Happy New Year everyone!