Toronto

Not winning the BBC challenge was like being gutted alive especially since we needed the money for the tough year we had due to awful global economy. We have been trying all we can to keep Afghan Hands at the scale we are operating and not to cut any jobs unless we are completely threatened to fold but I pray that it would never happen.
Since I did not have a lot of good news in the latter part of last year, I was not inspired to write but things are changing at least for one family.
We have been working with a family from the time I went back to Kabul the first time. It was my childhood friend Nazir's family that was left alone for years after his very early and untimely death. His little boy Rafiq has been working as an auto mechanic apprentice in order to provide for his mother, his 3 sisters and his late younger brother who at age 10 took his own life last year and broke our hearts.
We pushed Rafiq back to school where in the past 5 years he finished hight school. He interned at Tolo TV and fell in love with filmmaking and FINALLY two month ago, we were able to sponsor them with the help of my hero, Adina Niazi and bring the family to Toronto. In the process that took years, we lost one of the sisters to an arranged marriage to a distant relative forced by the grandparents at age 15. But I'm relieve to say, 2 girls and a boy with their mother are now in Toronto with possibilities beyond what they ever thought possible.
I will have news and photos in coming days.

Let's pray for good new.