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