Relief For Afghans

By participating in Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia’s Group Mentor Program, we’ve enjoyed getting to know a family of Afghan refugees who arrived in Adelaide in September 2021. Through this experience, our mentor group learnt of the many families left behind and forced into hiding since the Taliban take-over last August. With the economy in ruins, they can’t work for income and face dire persecution if found, due to their previous co-operation with our allies. Women and tween-aged children are at particular risk.
How can we help? While money isn’t everything, it does help.

Getting money over there and securely into the right hands is challenging but via our mentees personal connections, we can gift sorely needed cash directly to a small group of individuals in Afghanistan using ‘Moneygram’.

Getting money securely into the right hands within Afghanistan while avoiding intermediary corruption is problematic. So using ‘Moneygram’ via their personal connections, we can gift sorely needed cash directly to a small group of individuals in Afghanistan. This international Moneygram system provides a code for individuals to use for collecting cash in Afghanistan, which they then confirm via SMS once it’s in their hands.

Donations are gathered and funds dispersed through a joint cash account overseen by an Adelaide mentor group. The three joint account signatories are a retired Magistrate, proprietor of the SA College of English (est. 1987) and a retired Australian Financial Planner of the Year. They are all Rotarians as are most of our mentors, though this activity is not being conducted by Rotary.

The needy Afghans are colleagues left behind who have been identified, risk-rated then prioritised by our mentee and a couple of key Australian donors. That rating process assesses risk from starvation or persecution, risk to widows of veterans raising children, women and girls targeted for marriage to Taliban fighters, or boys targeted for indoctrination as suicide bombers. No family receives more than one donation within 6 months unless in extenuating
circumstances.

Essentially, we give money we can afford as carefully as we can, to those who desperately need it.