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36

THE LAST WORD

October/November 2012 www.esb.ie/em

HELPING TO MAKE THE WORLD A SAFE PLACE

EM speaks to Terry O’Malley, chairman of SAFE, about the charity’s work in Afghanistan and the support it receives from ElectricAid

It is hard not to think about Afghanistan without thinking of bloodshed, war and a people for long periods of their history deprived of basic human rights by a series of foreign and home grown oppressors. But this image while not entirely false is certainly incomplete. As Terry O’Malley, chairman of SAFE, Support for Afghan Further Education, points out the ordinary people of the country retain an extraordinary capacity for hospitality and generosity which goes almost entirely unreported in the Western media.

SAFE has been working in Afghanistan since 1990 when the country was still suffering from the fallout of its long war against occupation by the Soviet Union. The initial focus of the organisation was on third level education and its first project was the funding of students to Afghan students to attend university in Pakistan.

Since then the remit has widened considerably and it has been involved in primary, secondary, and third level education and education support, basic veterinary training, emergency assistance in housing rehabilitation and sanitation, refugee relief, agriculture, integrated rural development schemes, vocational training, female literacy, construction of primary schools and a health clinic, health education and traditional birth attendant training, and support to the first solar electricity scheme in Afghanistan.

People can be forgiven if they haven’t heard of SAFE. It is among Ireland’s lowest profile charities and receives no official funding from any traditional government or other sources. Instead it relies almost entirely on ElectricAid and the Church of Ireland Bishops’ Appeal as well as some private donations for its finances.

But that low profile also makes it one of the most high impact and cost effective charities in the country with 98% or more of its total income going directly into projects and less than 2% going on administrative costs. This quite astonishing level of efficiency is achieved as a result of SAFE’s operating model which is to work through local partners and existing Afghan NGOs with the skills, local knowledge of customs and traditions and particularly, the genuine needs of rural communities.

SAFE itself does not implement the projects on the ground, rather it arranges for the work to be carried out by these local partners arranging co-financing and local community involvement where possible.

To date, SAFE has receive ten separate grants from ElectricAid and projects supported have included the solar electrification of a school and a health clinic; the supply of computer hardware, software and furniture to a school; the purchase of a second hand jeep; a micro-hydro power project for Chacha Village, Begal Valley; a water supply and hygiene training project in Chacha and Quala villages; computer training for young women in Dhnola in the Saighan district; and the provision of playground equipment, seating and greenery for users of the Shahidan Clinic in Bamyian province.

SAFE chairman Terry O’Malley has just returned from his latest, and what he hopes will be his last, trip to Afghanistan. His work and that of the charity he has led for the past 20 years is now winding down.

He had personal experience of the deteriorating security situation in many parts of the country while there. Due to poor security on the road from Kabul to his destination in Bamyan province Terry was advised both by the Regional Safety Advisor from the Central Afghanistan NGO Safety Office to fly rather than drive and he duly flew in on a 12-seater Beechcraft 200 aircraft.

“It’s only a 35 minute flight as opposed to a nine hour trip by road”, he remarks. “But I missed the road trip nevertheless. I missed the people, the local geology, the tea shops and so on that you encounter on the way.”

Among his first engagements on this trip was a visit to the Shahidan Clinic for which SAFE had funded the provision playground equipment and other patient and visitor amenities. “From a purely psychological point of view we considered the provision of such necessary amenities for patients, relatives and their children to be of great importance, and I failed to understand why the Afghan Ministry of Health and the Norwegian NGO had ignored such an obvious humanitarian consideration when building the Clinic in 2011”, he explains.

“I was taken round the Clinic by the doctor in charge”, he adds. “The playground items were greatly appreciated and generally in constant use from about 10am onwards, as were the benches for patients or relatives. The brick-edged gravel pathways were attractive and well constructed, as were the brickedged flower beds. All the tree saplings were regularly watered and looked very healthy.”

He then went on to inspect the new water supply scheme for 200 households in Chacha and Qala Villages which SAFE had also funded. “The project, limited to 200 households and two mosques, is modelled on the unique one funded by Bishops’ Appeal 2010 ‘Water of Life Project 2010’, which is going very well”, he adds. “The source of water for the scheme is a fountain of two adjoining springs that are located 2.4 km from Chacha village and 2.6 km from Qala village. Two reinforced concrete reservoirs and 18 tap stations have been constructed, ensuring those 200 households and the two mosques will now have much easier access to safe drinking water, as well as benefitting from a special hygiene training course. I wish the people from ElectricAid could see at first hand the difference their generous funding is making out in this country. It really is wonderful.”

“it relies almost entirely on ElectricAid and the Church of Ireland Bishops’ Appeal as well as some private donations for its finances.

There is one loose end he hopes to tie up before calling it a day, however. “I was very sorry to see that the boundary wall outside the clinic, which was meant to be 2.2 metres high, was barely one metre. Such a boundary wall is very necessary to prevent dust and the effect of cold winds from mid October and November onwards and of course is essential for privacy. I hope we can fund the completion of this wall to bring an end to our work there.”