Our Kabul Visit for the initiative: www.jobsforafghans.org

I have been meaning to write about this since I returned from my visit last week, but procastination seems to have taken over my determination to write...honestly it is my fear of blogging - I keep telling myself "wait, write it down on a seperate sheet first, make sure it reads well, then post it...", but today I decided to post something anyway, I can always add a more polished version later (ya right).

So anyway, what was my visit all about? It is about an initiative that basically started out from a conversation with a random peace activist, Ralph Lopez (now not a random guy, but a great friend, a colleague and co-founder of JobsforAfghans) in Cambridge about three years ago. When I first met Ralph and upon finding out that I am from Afghanistan, he got all excited and asked that we meet again, I was thinking with myself "everyone wants to talk to this guy from Afghanistan" and never made an effort to see him again. But he was determined (well, an activist has to be) and he found me again and after a couple of conversations and exchange of ideas, he was basically kind enough to label me as his "co-founder" in his initiative now known as JobsforAfghans.

So long story short, from those random conversations, we now found ourselves meeting some of the most important players in Afghanistan. We have been getting tremendous response lately, espeically on our visit to Kabul last week hosted by an Aghan NGO called DHSA (Development Humanitarian Services for Afghanistan). Thanks to Shahir and Melek of DHSA, we spoke with and were warmly welcomed by government agencies, donor organizations (USAID, UNAMA, CIDA), embassies (Norway, Canada, Italy and US), local and internatinal NGOs (Care International, DACAAR), US Forces Deputy Commanding General (Macdonald) and his PAO (Col. Julian), small businesses, enthusiastic and committed individuals and most importantly ordinary Afghans, the unemployed, laborers etc.

Our webiste is http://www.jobsforafghans.org/. The picture above is myself and Ralph on Tap-e-Nadir Khan (The Nadir Khan Hill) overlooking one side of the beatuiful Kabul. Will add more details and pictures later...