Bpeace in Kabul

Another snowy day in Kabul.

Hello all from snowy Kabul where it is once again snowing on top of themud. Thank you all for letting us know you love us. Keep those comments coming in.

We hosted a lunch for the Afghan women who participated in Thunderbird’s Artemis program—the 2-week mini-MBA program in Phoenix last month. The ladies were radiant and abuzz with tales of the Thunderbird experience. They were so taken with the Thunderbird mentors that they are planning on launching their own mentoring program. In May, Kate and Laurie will go to Kabul to pick up our Style Road Trip ladies and bring them to New York. Kate will teach a workshop on “How to mentor.” Laurie will teach a workshop on business presentation skills.

Toni, Jim and Ray met with the new Minister of Commerce at the Presidential offices. He was most interested in decreasing Afghanistan’s trade deficit by increasing the country’s exports. It was an interesting meeting in that we didn’t always agree on the focus of programs.

Kate visited City Tower which is Kabul's, and therefore Afghanistan's, finest shopping center. No heat of course. So cold that you could see your breath. Male shopkeepers and their unemployed male friends sitting around in their coats under the falling ceilings. Few customers in what looked like construction sites. Beyond improving product, improving retail is a big opportunity for our women.

For the past two days most of the team has been conducting business assessments—benchmarking where the women are with their businesses, and understanding their most critical needs to grow their businesses. During 60-90 minute interviews we tried to gain granularity around their needs for finance, marketing, training and quality standards.

Gwendy, Paula, Laura and Kate spent time with the women in their homes.

Hossai is one of our favorite women and her husband was a delight. She is a pistol. Under the Taliban, she owned a forbidden satellite dish which was almost discovered. She managed to get rid of it by stashing in a neighbors home as the Taliban pounded on the door. Had they been caught, the husband would have had to wear the dish around their neck. Almost laughable until you think about it…that said Hossai and her husband had a chuckle. Today, she runs a successful uniform business. Her critical need: a generator and electric sewing machines, so she can double her production with the same amount of workers. What a woman!

Hamida’s husband was quite the charmer, dominating the conversation with Gwendy, showing her a photo album with all his international friends. Hamida has been selling hand-knit sweaters and gloves to the Embassy and NGO communities, with her husband as her “marketing manager.” He personally makes the rounds with flyers and generated orders for 40 pairs of gloves and socks from the Russian Embassy. In order to exploit the hand-knit niche, Hamida needs design help and better quality materials.

Laila, who is Bpeace’s program manager in Kabul, wants to grow her jewelry business in an innovative way by integrating a jewelry-making school. We have loved the professionalism she brings to our program here. Her big home run--when she found out the Ministry of Women’s Affairs had no heat and we would have to bring our own fuel, she cajoled the University of Kabul into providing us heated classrooms.

Rangina came over for dinner tonight. She was born in Kandahar, left the country with her family when she was 3, grew up in the US. She returned to Kandahar two years ago to work with women who only are allowed to come out of their homes for wedding celebrations. Embroidery from Kandahar is known as the best in the country and she needs help tweaking the traditional designs for the US market, and finding distributors here. Toni ordered a beaded lariat to wear during the Style Road Trip events in May.

Ray came off of his awesome training session as he and Jim had an inspiring meeting with the head of the Kabul Chamber of Commerce who suggested lots of ideas, including that we do some training on radio.

Gwendy and Laura had dinner with a reporter from Bloomberg News, a local architect, Zolaykha Sherzad who is updating traditional Afghan silk into modern fashions. Suzanne Thompson also joined them (an American staying at the Inter-continental with us—her Roots for Peace program helps families revive their orchards).

So it’s 11:30 pm, and we’re still up, doing the blog. We have our second wind. Tomorrow should be our last full day in Kabul. If we can get a flight out on Thursday. The low cloud cover is keeping lots of flights grouned.