Alleyn's Feminist Society Support Women in Afghanistan

Friday 3 December was the Alleyn’s Feminist Society Charity Day and the wonderful FemSoc student leaders organised a staff netball match to raise money for their chosen charity Women for Afghan Women (WAW). The fun and highly competitive match was played between the Lower, Middle and Upper School tutors as pupils cheered them from the sidelines.

On receiving news that FemSoc had chosen WAW as their charity, WAW wrote to FemSoc leader Eilah in Year 13 with an update on the charity’s work.

It was great to hear that WAW has been able to keep all of their staff and clients (women and children under their care) in Afghanistan safe and alive, despite ongoing threats from the Taliban and other groups. They receive daily support from the charity team on the ground and a number of WAW's high-risk staff are now safe in other countries.

WAW’s ongoing work in Afghanistan includes:

• Daily wellness checks, access to safehouses, and mental health counseling for clients.
• For high-risk staff and clients, plus their immediate families, WAW is continually working to get them to safety by assisting with obtaining documents (such as passports and ID cards) and supporting their applications to the Priority 2 (P-2) US Refugee Resettlement Program, humanitarian parole, and similar programs in Europe, Latin America, and other countries.
• Although some of WAW’s programs have been suspended until new policies are in place, WAW continues to partner with the United Nations in Afghanistan to provide humanitarian support to internally displaced persons and refugee returnees.
• The WAW Children’s Support Centers remain operational.
• They are finding legal ways to send cash to Afghanistan amid the ongoing banking crisis, which has led to economic failure, cash shortage, and widespread poverty.

For more information about WAW’s ongoing work, visit their website here.

FemSoc meets weekly to discuss historical and topical issues related to Feminism. It is a student-led society that has a solid base of students from across the school who devise and lead sessions for one another every Wednesday lunchtime.