Local News
Bringing back the hope
Three women join forces to help Afghan children

3/5/02
By RHONDA PARKS MANVILLE
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Diana Haskins After the attacks of Sept. 11, several things happened to Diana Haskins of Goleta that dramatically altered the way she views the world.

"As a Christian woman, I fasted and I prayed," said Mrs. Haskins, a member of the Mormon church. She and her husband, Scott Haskins, discussed how they could help and decided to send money to New York.

"But as I sat down to write the check, I had a profound feeling that it needed to go in a different direction," she said. "I decided to sit with it."

A few days later, she saw an Afghan woman interviewed on CNN and learned of the severe living conditions and the brutality suffered by the people in Afghanistan, particularly the women.

"From there I went to the Web site of Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, and I was so ashamed that I didn't know what was happening there," she said. "Then I remembered that I had seen something about this on 'Oprah' once, but I didn't do anything about it."

That night, Mrs. Haskins said, she was haunted by a dream: "All these Afghan women were in their blue burqas, raising their arms to me, asking me to help them," she said. "And I woke up with the biggest pain in my heart. I had to do something.

With the help of friends, she decided to host a fund-raiser at Earl Warren Showgrounds to benefit a hospital serving Afghan refugees in Quetta, Pakistan. It was there that she met Kathleen Rafiq, another local woman with a longtime concern about the plight of the Afghan people.

Now the two have become partners in a school and orphanage in Kabul, where 120 students -- including 25 girls -- will start classes March 22.

Their nonprofit project is called the Afghan Academy of Hope, through which they are expanding a school and orphanage founded by a third partner from Afghanistan, Soraya Abdullah Hakim.

"The bottom line is to bring hope back into the lives of these children," said Mrs. Haskins, a married mother of seven who is retired from the cosmetics business. "What the children there want more than anything is go back to school."

Ms. Rafiq, a broadcast graphic designer who works for KEYT-TV, has been following the upheaval and hardship in Afghanistan for more than 20 years. Her former husband, an Afghan, was related to the exiled king, Mohammed Zahir Shah.

"A lot of the children in Afghanistan have known nothing but war and famine, and have never even seen a school. We want to change that and we think we can," said Ms. Rafiq. "It is so sad that it took an event like Sept. 11 to make people aware of what has gone on there. But now that the country has been liberated, there is a way to get in."

After their introduction, the two South Coast residents decided to put their energies into Ms. Rafiq's long-held dream of supporting an orphanage and school in Kabul. Then, at a fund-raiser organized by Afghan students in Los Angeles, they were introduced to a critically important third partner, Mrs. Hakim, who lives in Tarzana.

In 1995 Mrs. Hakim was working as the director of the United Nation's English Language Training Center in Kabul when shelling between rival warlords reduced the city to rubble, killing an estimated 43,000 people, she said.

In response to the disaster, Mrs. Hakim and her husband turned the family compound in Kabul into an orphanage and school. The Wafia Educational and Training Center for Children sheltered up to 700 children at a time.

"People were dying and the children were running around the streets, with no mother, no father, no nothing," she said. "It was terrible and unsafe and every day there were people crying in the streets. I decided to do something very little, to educate some of the children. We gave our home and our furniture to the school."

The United Nations closed its offices in Kabul and relocated to Pakistan. Mrs. Hakim stayed to teach at the school but at the end of 1995 she and her husband sought asylum in the United States, joining many of their relatives in Southern California. Since then, she and other family members kept the school running by sending $6,000 per year in donations to pay the staff, she said.

In 1996, the city fell to the Taliban, and the girls were kicked out of the school. Still, the school remained open, and the headmaster regularly sent videotapes of daily life there to Mrs. Hakim in California. The images were shot in secrecy and are poor, "because the Taliban didn't allow videotaping," she explained.

Now, with Mrs. Haskins and Ms. Rafiq as partners, Mrs. Hakim plans to expand the school to accommodate 250 orphans. The women want to add a second story and secure the property next door.

Once those goals are reached, the trio wants to help finance home schools throughout Kabul and create financial aid programs so that young adults can attend college abroad and return home to rebuild their nation. To raise money for the project, Mrs. Haskins and Ms. Rafiq are planning a series of dinners featuring Afghan food and hospitality.

"They are angels," Mrs. Hakim said of her two American partners. "Together, the Afghans and the Americans can do a lot. I believe in charity, in helping the underprivileged. These kids know nothing but war and fighting."

The women plan to visit the school in Kabul in the next few months, to assess what's needed there. Two nonprofit agencies, Mrs. Hakim's Association for Afghan American Community Services, and Mrs. Haskins and Ms. Rafiq's Afghan Academy of Hope, are working to fund the school. Mrs. Hakim's organization also works to provide services to Afghans, particularly the elderly, in the Los Angeles region.

The women emphasized that their endeavor is strictly humanitarian, and not affiliated with any religious, political or governmental organizations.

"We want the school to be a place where the children can grow up without fear and eventually join the children of the world with an education," said Mrs. Hakim. "They need an education to make a living and to create a future for the country."

F. Y. I.

Tax-deductible donations should be addressed to:
Ambassadors for Children (AFC)
C/O AAOH
5710 Hollister Ave. #155
Goleta, CA 93117

Diana Haskins will be the guest on "In Focus" with Tracy Lehr, 6:30 p.m. Sunday, KEYT-Channel 3.
RHONDA PARKS MANVILLE