The Hindu Business Line : Their magic carpet

Afghan Action reaches out to unemployed and uneducated Afghans by teaching them the art of carpet weaving, combined with literacy and numeric classes.

Those trained and employed by the charity are also given the schooling they crave by two teachers provided by the Ministry of Education.

WFS

Dreamweavers: Rahela (centre), a beneficiary of Afghan Action, with her sisters.

Barbara Lewis

Well-heeled city types, sipping from wine glasses, peruse carpets laid out on the parquet floors of Goodenough College, an elite academic institution in central London. They’re attending a sale organised by Afghan Action, a London-based charity which is trying to help men and women starved of employment and education by years of conflict.

It’s a good evening. Property developers, city traders and lawyers who have had every educational advantage spend £8,000 on carpets made by the disadvantaged of Afghanistan.

“We made enough to keep the wolf from the door,” said Chris Beales, chief executive of the charity, which needs between £5,000 and £8,000 per month to run its carpet workshop in Karte Se, Kabul. A bigger source of income should be contracts signed with major British-chains John Lewis and Habitat, as the high street becomes more conscious of ethical trade. But to meet these orders, the charity, which employs 60 weavers, 23 management and ancillary staff and around 25 trainees at a time, needs to expand.

“It’s the catch 22 phase,” said Beales. “We want to expand, but we’re not quite ready.”

Women in need

Set up in 2005, Afghan Action reaches out to roughly equal numbers of men and women. The women’s need is particularly great. According to statistics provided by the charity, 71 per cent of Afghans over the age of 15 cannot read or write. The illiteracy rate rises to 92 per cent for women in rural areas and three out of five girls never get the opportunity to go to school.

One of those who has benefited from Afghan Action is Rahela, 18, who was trained by the charity and now works in the Karte Se workshop together with her sisters Maria, 21, and Layla, 15. “I was sitting at home doing nothing before I started here because it’s very hard at the moment for girls to find suitable jobs. I was really bored — I’m so happy that I’m doing something productive now and that there’s more money coming in; because that means we can live a bit better,” said Rahela. Her monthly wages of around $50, together with her sisters’ earnings, help to provide for their family of nine and sometimes stretch to include the occasional luxury. “We’ve recently bought a cassette player for the first time — we all saved to get this. We can also afford to buy meat a bit more often. We hardly had it before,” said Rahela.

Salaries at Afghan Action compare favourably with the less than a dollar a day earned by many carpet weavers in Afghanistan and, in addition, the charity provides a mid-day meal, education and health care.

Another of Afghan Action’s employees is Mezhgan, 20. Because of their poverty, her family married her to a much older man when she was only 12. He beat her, insulted her and was unfaithful. The marriage produced two daughters before it ended in divorce. A neighbour introduced her to Afghan Action, and her work with them is now helping to support her two sisters, three brothers, mother and grandmother. The trainee weavers are taught skills that date back centuries and traditionally have been concentrated in the hands of Afghan women. Afghan carpets are renowned for the richness of their dyes and their fine weaving, but have suffered from competition from cheaper machine-made carpets from elsewhere and the devastating impact of the war.

Afghan Action carpets combine traditional patterns with designs catering to special requests. Personalised designs can range from family coats of arms to rugs that match the wallpaper in the rooms where they will be placed. Those trained and employed by the charity are also given the schooling they crave by two teachers provided by the Ministry of Education. “They are so keen to learn, it is deeply moving — most of them have not had the opportunity to go to school in the past,” said Beales.

Those who work for Afghan Action receive literacy and numeric classes for an hour a day. Six of the trainees are under the age of 14, which the charity had designated as the minimum age for beginning training. It decided to be flexible about the age limit because in the absence of literacy and birth certificates, it can be difficult to be certain of people’s ages and, in any case, under-age Afghan Action trainees get more education than they would at school.

Those aged less than 14 spend three hours in the classroom followed by afternoons learning weaving. At an Afghan primary school, they would receive only two hours of education, Beales said. “And in addition, they will receive a mid-day meal and benefit from vocational training as carpet weavers,” he said.

It is a distant dream, but perhaps, eventually, one or two of them might even join the international elite at Goodenough College in London, which has 650 postgraduate students from more than 90 countries, but has yet to receive one from Afghanistan.

Women’s Feature Service

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