Small donations make a big difference for families in Afghanistan

THE Aireys Inlet Rural Australians for Refugees (AIRAR) community group is encouraging people to donate the price of a cup of coffee per week, the equivalent of $20 each month, to support families trapped and struggling to survive in Afghanistan.

The volunteer organisation’s Aid for Afghans fund currently supports five families living in Afghanistan who are at significant risk of persecution because of their faith, ethnicity and previous occupations as advocates, teachers or journalists.

The fund aims to provide the families it supports with the means to set up small businesses, allowing them to become self-sufficient, or to assist them to survive while they navigate the visa application process and eventually leave the country.

One family has already received enough support to set up a clothing store which covers their living costs.

AIRAR’s Rosita Vila said a small number of regular contributors, along with a growing number of fundraising events, helped to maintain the fund.

“It doesn’t take much to make a big difference,” she said.

“A cup of coffee a week will support a family for a month. What incredible inequality we have in our lives.”

Money from the fund is sent to the families on a monthly basis, according to the size and needs of the family.

Ms Vila said AIRAR is only able to send small amounts, “not just because we haven’t got anything bigger to give them, but because if the Taliban saw that their accounts were getting large sums of money, that would endanger them.”

She said one of the families AIRAR supports is comprised of a former journalist, now in hiding, and a former school principal who is no longer allowed to work as a teacher.

The small amount provided allows them to “survive in a very difficult situation”.

“She has her mother living with her and a couple of kids.

“But, of course, she can’t even go out to the shops or do anything unless she can find a neighbour or a relative – an adult male – to go out with her and chaperone her.”

Another family is hoping for support to open a small business selling groceries, a request AIRAR are working to fulfil.

“We’re not bringing about huge change,” Ms Vila said.

“We’re just doing the little that we can to make people’s lives more bearable.

“We regularly get messages from them of incredible gratitude for the fact that we give them hope. As well as survival, we give them hope.”

AIRAR most recent fundraising event, a concert held on April 21, raised almost $3,000 for its Aid for Afghans fund.

Ms Vila said the event “came out of the community itself”, with the newly formed Surf Coast Chamber players donating their time to the cause, and Muzafar Ali, an Afghan refugee, filmmaker and photographer, donating photographs to be raffled.

AIRAR’s next fundraising event is slated for Anglesea in July, with the Anglesea Rock Choir volunteering their talents to lead the community in a singalong at the pub event.

“We want to raise community awareness and provide people with an opportunity to do something to help because people are sympathetic, but they ask the question, ‘What can we do?’,” Ms Vila said.

“This gives people an answer to that question.

“It may not be much; it’s not stopping the war, it doesn’t provide freedom for people, but it allows them to survive.”

For more information, or to find out how to donate, email [email protected]