Your generosity helps make recovery possible.
Maryam’s Story
Maryam* was thirteen when she joined one of Hagar’s new community-based training centres in Kabul. Nightmares had taken her sleep. Anxiety had taken her concentration. A deep sense of isolation had taken her ability to trust the girls sitting beside her.
Afghanistan is, right now, one of the most restrictive places in the world to be a girl. Opportunities that once existed for girls, school, work, even simply being seen in public life, have closed, one by one.
The kind of shelter-based support that used to exist for girls could no longer continue.
Hagar had a choice: leave, or find another way to stay.
We chose to stay.
More than that, we found a way to keep working with girls specifically, in one of the only settings left where that’s still possible, a new, community-based model, built through months of careful coordination with local authorities.
That Hagar can still reach girls like Maryam in Afghanistan today is no small thing. It only continues because people keep choosing to make it possible.
Over two months, Maryam became calmer. More engaged. More willing to sit with the other girls, and then to speak with them.
Today, she teaches them.
She is one of the steadiest hands in her workshop now and the one showing the newest, most frightened girls the same embroidery skills that helped her find her way back.
Every Spring, this appeal reaches people who choose to make recovery possible. This year, we want to show you exactly where your generosity is taking us, and what your support is helping to rebuild.
Recovery is not a single moment.
It is the careful rebuilding of safety, skills and trust, for as long as it takes. And at every stage of that journey,
your support helps make the next step possible.
