Support getting 1 Afghan family to safety.

Over the past 15 years I’ve worked with a remarkable Afghan woman in her endeavor to change the plight of women in her country. We crossed paths through NGOs and state department funded programs focused on helping Afghan women build their business skills, which included in-person education sessions in the US.

In Afghanistan, she operated a private school, a woman's internet café, and educated women on healthy prenatal care. More recently she was working for USAID before the fall of the country to the Taliban. Her efforts to change her country and educate women now put her and her family of 5, including 3 children under 5, in grave danger. Even including their pictures would put them in danger, which is why I used press pictures of life under the Taliban. The family is in hiding in Afghanistan as a team that has mentored her over the past 15 years is working to get her and her family to safety.

Getting families out of Afghanistan is a long and expensive process. It starts with applying for humanitarian parole through the US government, including an application fee of $575 per person plus legal fees. The final step in being granted humanitarian parole includes an interview at a US embassy, which the US no longer has in Afghanistan. Therefore, we are exploring options to get the family safely to a “lily pad” country with a US embassy. This will cost upwards of $1,000 per person, plus living expenses in the “lily pad” country while they wait on final processing of the humanitarian parole application. Finally, they family will need air travel to the US, and funds to help get them resettled as they get work permits and find jobs. She and her husband are university educated, fluent in English, and were committed to developing Afghanistan during the US presence. As the curtain falls on their dream of a better Afghanistan, our hope is they can resettle safely and build a remarkable future for their 3 children in the US.

100% of contributions will go directly to fund travel and humanitarian parole to get this family to the US, and the remaining funds will go to the family to help get them settled here.