Suraya Pakzad is a true warrior for women’s rights in Afghanistan and for human equality there and everywhere in the world.  She is graceful but determined to find solutions to improve womens lives.  She takes many personal risks by establishing programs that are contrary to the present unfair treatment of women.  She is very conscious of these risks but she states “sacrifices must be made by women today for a better life for others tomorrow.”  She is the founder and director of Voice of Women, an Afghanistan N.G.O.  She and I have worked on numerous projects and this time we again combined efforts in several areas.  The most recent was the water system in Heart’s Shalbafan district completed on May 10th, 2008.

The second was our community gathering on May 8th at her office courtyard with the women and their children from the safe shelter operated by VWO and also attending were other community women.  The purpose was to continue this day of honor for mothers who have experienced violence in their lives by a loss of their child.  I had the 1st gathering for this cause last year in the U.S. and will again this year but we also wanted to bring this awareness to Afghanistan.

Women have had such great sadness and losses caused by violence especially mothers and so this community gathering was appreciated and well attended.  More than 100 women and children gathered to share feelings and stories.  Women would rise and tell their stories of the pain they have endured losing their children to violence, husbands and family members.

One woman weeped as she told her story of losing two children to violence and her husband.  She thanked everyone for listening and stated that this was the first time in 10 years that anyone asked her to share her feelings and express her emotions.  Another woman stood holding a child she saved from a crazy husband who cut off her left ear when she tried to escape with her children.  This child is with her but the others she cannot find at this time.  Others stood and shared similar tales of life’s hardships due to violence.  Others sat apparently listening or maybe telling their stories to themselves as their eyes were full of emotions.

The children felt safe, protected by these united women in this community based on trust and caring for each other.  In celebration we prepared gifts for the children and mothers that even though they carry such grief we wanted to recognize their suffering and share some small rememberance of this beautiful day together.