The Orphanage-Guru Sewak begins his work.

I spent last week going to the Allahoddin Orphanage everyday. Above is a picture of two PARSA staff- Atikula and Zarguna, who are working with me. During the week I got to meet some of the orphanage staff, got to know some of the boys, attempted to find out about some of the facility's procedures and policies and otherwise just tried to determine what PARSA could do to assist the kids and the staff. The boys and the girls live in different sections of the orphanage, of course, and as it turns out, unfortunately, no one other than orphanage staff is given access to even so much as talk to the girls, much less develop programs to assist them. As such PARSA has been, by default, working only with the boys.

The boys are a great, though, and a lot of fun to hang out with. The orphanage is incredibly under staffed, with only one staff member to supervise the entire group of 230 boys that live there, and they boys have very little to do in the way of activities, sports or games. PARSA is examining the possibility of raising donations to hire another staff member who can assist the current supervisor as well as engage the kids and provide them with some much needed mental and physical development activities. Working with Marc Gold, from the 100 Friends Project, www.100friendsproject.org, we've determined that we can hire a full time staff member for a year, as well as supply the kids with plenty of activies and games for $1000. Marc has already donated $500 towards this goal and asked that PARSA match his contribution. If you are interested in donating to the orphanage through PARSA, please click the Donations link on the main page (or go to http://www.afghanistan-parsa.org/sub/donations.html). The donations category is "Physical Therapy Clinic and Psychosocial Services" or just write Allahoddin Orphanage.

For my own program, I've selected 20 boys, two groups of ten, that I will be working with directly for the next 5 weeks. The idea for the program is to try to find out which counseling techniques will translate into the culture, which ones will prove to be most effective for the boys at the orphanage in terms of treating them for trauma related mental health issues, and then training the staff and the teachers who work with the boys on a daily basis in those techniques.

The next five weeks should proove to be very interesting, for myself and the boys, but if nothing else, I hope to learn a lot from this rambunctious bunch and maybe even have a little fun. Here are some picture of some of the kids I've met so far. The first photo is Parsa staff Zarguna working one-on-one with one of the boys and the bottom two are some of the girls I happened to run across one day as they were walking across the orphanage grounds.
--Guru Sewak