Our Partners
Kashmir Family Aid has partnered with several nonprofits and government agencies to further our mission of helping children in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir displaced by the 2005 earthquake.
Deschutes County awarded a $1,500 grant to Kashmir Family Aid on Nov. 3 for Project Pakistan, an e-mail exchange program between Redmond schools and Pakistani students.
The program is a partnership between KFA, the Redmond School District and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Oregon. Deschutes County’s grant money will specifically go toward purchasing eight computers for the Nilore Model School in Nilore, an extremely illiterate and impoverished village outside Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital city. For more information on Project Pakistan, click here.
Redmond School District and Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Oregon
Kashmir Family Aid has partnered with the Redmond School District and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Oregon for the Pakistani e-mail exchange program.
Most kids in the area don’t know how to read, and about 98 percent of mothers are illiterate. While some parents send their children to local government schools, they have a high dropout rate.
These students currently have no means of learning how to use a computer – an essential skill now for any Pakistani who wants to leave the impoverished rural areas and get a living-wage job. Right now, female literacy in Kashmir villages is just 3 percent. More than 70 percent of females in Pakistan can’t read at all, let along use a computer. If these students can get computers, they will be able to e-mail children from Redmond schools.
Much of the foundation for this has already been set up through the Redmond School District, which just hired Nathan Munoz to connect students with local nonprofits. Mr. Munoz is working with us right now to set up the e-mail exchange program between three fifth grade classes and the Pakistani students. We also plan to do a similar project some day with Susie Lucas from Highland Magnet School in Bend. For more information on Project Pakistan, click here.
Ibtida
Kashmir Family Aid is working with Ibtida, another nonprofit, to build a school for children in Nilore. Based in Philadelphia, Ibtida provides secular education to Pakistani children in a school that was started in 1999 in a garage for nine students and one teacher.
The school quickly outgrew that place and relocated first to a make-shift structure, then an actual building in 2005. The school has only continued to expand and now has 224 students. Administrators have been forced to turn children away because there is not enough room.
For more information, click here.
City of Bend
The Bend City Council agreed on Oct. 13 to begin establishing a sister city relationship with Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Kashmir, in the Pakistan region.
The city councilors did not take a formal vote at Monday’s work session, but they informally expressed support of the proposal and plan to vote soon. If Bend moves forward with this, we will become the first official city in the United States to partner with Azad Kashmir, an impoverished Muslim community literally on the other end of the world.
Only one other U.S. city – Fresno, Calif. – has such a relationship in Pakistan, said Laura Giroux, the membership manager for Sisters City International, a nonprofit that officially recognizes partnerships between U.S. and international communities. But Fresno’s sister city is based in the wealthy cultural city of Lahore.
Muzaffarabad, on the other hand, was the epicenter of the Oct. 8, 2005 earthquake that killed at least 73,000, left 3 million homeless and destroyed more than 1,000 hospitals and 8,000 of the region’s 11,000 primary and secondary schools. Azad Kashmir itself is the controversial plot of land over which India and Pakistan have constantly fought.
For more information, click here.
Cauzal Coffee
Kashmir Family Aid has partnered with Cauzal Coffee, a local company that uses proceeds from coffee purchases to help fund humanitarian causes around the world. We have 13 projects available for support on our Web site, but this specific project will provide chairs to 250 children who just study on the ground in tents. For more information, click here.
Please join Our Cause by supporting “Project Pakistan.” Our goal is to raise $2,000.00 by Dec. 31, 2008.
You can help by making a simple change in your coffee consumption. Thirty-three percent of your purchase price will go directly to “Project Pakistan.” If you’d like to make an additional tax-deductible donation to this Cause, you can choose that option at checkout. You will receive an order confirmation by e-mail, a shipment of premium coffee, and Cauzal will notify us of your support.
(And if you’re wondering how good this coffee really is, you’ll be happy to know that Cauzal Coffee’s roaster has been among the top two for Roast Magazine’s prestigious “Roaster of the Year” award two years in a row!)
For more information, click here.
Centratel – Telephone Answering Service
For more information contact Chris Stoller: chriss@kashmrifamily.org