Non-profit organization
Morning Star Staff
Evacuation expenses and new placement opportunities
Trauma Care & Support
Ready to Move Forward in Afghanistan
Essential Relief
Relaunching essential programs under new Afghan administration
Replacing equipment lost during the conflict
Thank you so much for your continued support of the “Neighbor” program. Your support this past year has literally helped thousands endure the pandemic in the Bamyan region. Some needed food just to survive; others learned basic hygiene practices that kept them from getting sick.
As Morning Star launches into the spring of 2021, we will be expanding to add a Birth Life Savings Skills course in the Bamyan region. This course has had great success over the years in Herat, and it is now time to expand into Bamyan.
Under the reign of the Taliban, health care access in Afghanistan was very limited. Afghans who did have access were forced to walk for hours to see a nurse. Most medical professionals immigrated to other countries during those years.
Today, with the freedom to educate both boys and girls, the health care system is slowly turning around. Unfortunately, women still have very limited access to health care since only 2% of Afghan physicians are female. Although there are now over 150 government hospitals in Afghanistan many patients still need to travel to India and Pakistan, spending millions annually for quality medical care. There is still a huge need to train qualified men and women who will then train others to develop the health care system in Afghanistan.
Morning Star’s Hope Family Medicine Afghanistan, a three-year residency program in Kabul, trains men and women to become certified Family Medicine Specialists. To date, 32 doctors have been trained through this program and some are now training others to do the same.
Afghanistan has one of the youngest populations on the planet. The median age is 19, half the population is under 19 years old. It was only 19 years ago that girls were banned from school and only 1% of young men attended a “college.” Today, approximately 1/3 of students are girls. With the population being so young, there is an amazing potential in this upcoming generation.
One Kabul high school senior, Alizada, faced extreme odds of completing high school. She was allowed to attend school, even though her father was a poor coal miner. Two years ago her classroom was attacked by an ISIS suicide bomber, killing 40 of her classmates. She dropped out but eventually reentered school at the urging of her teachers. She eventually earned the top national spot in the college entrance exams.
There is a very popular leadership book called Start With Why. It is well-known in the leadership development society asking the question, “ Why do you do what you do?” At Morning Star’s Institute for Leadership Development (ILD), we start with “WHO”. Character development is the foundation of leadership. Before I ask someone why they are doing something, I want to know who they are: Are they worth following? Do they hold the values that serve others, not themselves? Without a moral compass, our leadership arrows will hit a self-serving target.
