01.06.06

No development without education - Mission East in Afghanistan

Mission East’s Managing Director, Dr Kim Hartzner, has just been on a trip to Afghanistan. What most people hear about Afghanistan is bombs, angry mullahs and Taliban, burning schools and fighting between the police and Taliban. But in general the news does not talk about the progress also taking place in the country.  It does not mention all the fantastic things that are happening in Afghanistan every day.  

Among many other things, Mission East has built six schools in Afghanistan over the last year. During his visit, Kim Hartzner attended the handover ceremony at which the Afghan Government officially took responsibility for one of these schools, in the village of Khanaqa, Takhar province. Surrounded by mountains, everything else seems far away: for kilometre after kilometre there is nothing but mountains. But now there is a school. And this brings hope - hope for a way out of poverty and for young people to learn to participate in creating the development the country needs. The local mullah is positive about the schools: “No development without education. We need engineers and doctors!

”The construction of this school was made possible because of the 43 kilometres of road that Mission East has built in co-operation with the Tearfund Belgium, financed by the Belgian Foreign Ministry and EU. The road is extremely important since the previously isolated villages in the district now have easier access to markets, schools and health clinics.

But attending school does not solve all the problems of poverty. Mission East has also carried out other project activities in these villages, to contribute to an improvement in health and well-being.  In particular, clean drinking water and hygiene education mean a reduction in deaths from preventable diseases.

Kim recalls the words of one villager he met:

“Life has changed dramatically. Before 20 to 30 children died each year. Now not a single one dies” 

How positive to see that ‘good news’ is also a reality in Afghanistan!

 23.12.05
The tsunami one year after

On Boxing Day 2004, a massive earthquake deep in the Indian Ocean triggered tidal waves which reached speeds of 500mph and a height of 20 metres when they hit Indonesia. Some 300,000 people across 12 countries were killed. 

Mission East and the other Integral partners started the relief work almost immediately in the most affected countries - India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Mission East is part of a formal alliance of 12 Christian relief and development organisations established in 2003. This alliance made a quick and professional response to the victims from the tsunami possible.  

Through Integral's office in London, all 12 organisations got involved in an immediate joined response which provided help to the most affected areas.  

Mission East immediately send out letters to all the supporters of the organisations, to obtain economic support for the victims. The money were soon channelled to emergency programmes in Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia.

The emergency aid mainly consisted of medicine, food and clean water. Later the reconstruction of whole villages started.

If you stand on a beach and watch the Indian Ocean lapping the coastline of South Asia, it is as if nothing ever happened. But turn around, look inland and the legacy of that dreadful day is everywhere, even today.

The Indonesian province of Aceh is still a barren wasteland. But slowly, normality is returning. Housing counstruction is underway in the village of Bareundah, in Aceh, Indonesia, where Mission East's Integral partner Tearfund UK is helping. 300 families in 5 villages whose homes were destroyed by the tsunami are participating in the construction of their own earthquake resistant homes and sanitation facilities. Every 10 days a house is being completed and a family has a place to call home again.