Today’s Good People, Good Works will be presented in Dari and English, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

I'm very hopeful for a brighter future and happy future for Afghanistan. That's why we invest in children, because I am 100% sure that, to educate children, you can be optimistic for a bright future for that nation, because as we all know, children are the future of a country.

Halo, warm-hearted viewers, and welcome to Good People, Good Works on Supreme Master Television. Today’s show features the first in a two-part series on the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization (AFCECO), a non-profit entity based in Kabul, Afghanistan that seeks to nurture and shelter vulnerable children by providing a safe environment with all basic necessities, including proper education, health care and love.

AFCECO strives to develop the young ones into the country’s next generation of leaders. The organization was founded in 2001 by Ms. Andeisha Farid, an Afghan social entrepreneur who has spent almost her whole childhood and adolescence living in refugee camps.

This 27-year-old woman has gained international recognition for her work and was invited to the April 2010 “Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship” in America, an event hosted by US President Barack Obama to deepen ties between business leaders, foundations, and entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.

During the Summit, President Obama praised Ms. Farid’s work in a speech saying that "… Andeisha Farid, [is] an extraordinary woman from Afghanistan who's taken great risks to educate the next generation, one girl at a time. Together, they point the way to a future where progress is shared and prosperity is sustainable.”

This is how Andeisha Farid's story began:

We settled in a remote desert area close to the Iran/Afghanistan border. And soon after, thousands of other people joined us in that refugee camp. It was really terrible living in that refugee camp with no medical facility, no school for the children, even the people didn't have access to clean water.

Later her parents arranged to send her to a hostel based at a refugee camp in Pakistan. There she had access to education.

There was a school for the girls. I remember there was a library for the public to go and use the books in that library. And there was a medical facility for the people in that refugee camp. There was a theater hall where the people could go and watch movies, the people in the camp.

The camp was actually run by a group of very enthusiastic and powerful women. They were very, very well educated women. They were talking about freedom and democracy, women’s rights, and they really inspired me, living and seeing those people.

In 2002, Ms. Farid continued her education at a university in Islamabad, Pakistan. While studying there, she supported herself by taking a part-time teaching position at a local Afghan school.

So when I was working in that Afghani school in Pakistan, back in Islamabad, I saw that many children left the school because they simply could not afford to pay the fee, and they had to go and work instead and feed their families. In the beginning it was a little bit hard for me to think of a solution or something to solve that problem. But soon after I realized that all I need to do is to begin, and to begin all I need to do is to bring these kids back to school.

With the cooperation of the community and the help of her friends, a house was established in 2002 for 15 Afghan children in Islamabad who couldn't afford going to school.

And I remember one of the women I was talking to, because her little girl was really, really very smart. I asked her if she would like her daughter to come back to school. She said, "Of course I want it; I want my daughter to be educated like you. And the thing is, she needs fees, food and housing."

Then I said "Okay, let's set up a small house and let these children come here and stay there as their home, and then go to school as well." They are all Afghan refugees living there in those orphanages, because still there is more than 1,000,000 Afghans living in Pakistan as refugees and they are really in desperate need.

In 2007, Andeisha Farid returned to Kabul and the next year the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization was officially registered with the national government.

Well, for the moment we run eleven orphanages in different parts of Afghanistan, and still we have two orphanages in Pakistan for Afghan refugees living over there. We house 600 children in all those eleven orphanages, both boys and girls. The five orphanages are located in Kabul, two orphanages are located in Jalalabad where we have kids from Nuristan, Kunar, and Bladmon and Jalalabad living in the Jalalabad orphanage. Then the five orphanages in Kabul, we have children from all over Afghanistan.

We have children from Badakhshan, from Takhar, from Nimruz, from Herat, from Daykundi, from Bamyan, living in Kabul orphanages. We do have two orphanages in Herat, so the children come from Farah, from Nimruz, from Herat, and from Kandahar.

Afghanistan is a land where many different ethnic groups reside and languages are spoken. Thus teaching appreciation for other cultures and peoples is another one of AFCECO’s central objectives.

And we just want them to love each other, to be happy in the orphanage, and respect each other regardless of gender, race, and ethnicity. We would like to teach them that human beings are the same, there is no difference between them, and nobody can be superior to another. Nobody can think alike, nobody can impose their ideas on others. And we just teach them through the daily life they have.

The orphanages are divided by age group. In the orphanages for the older children, training in various life skills is provided. Being physically active is emphasized and opportunities are given to youngsters of all ages to go outside and have fun.

And this leadership training set up for the girls was funded by an award I recently got from Goldman Sachs and Fortune magazine. So it was an award that had a financial pot as well, and 100% of this award went for those children, for those girls to get leadership and management training.

And then further from the in-country training they had for three months in Kabul, the top three of them will be selected and go to the United States for further education and a mentorship process. And of course they have many other facilities, like going and playing soccer.

We recently have partnered with the American University of Afghanistan, and they let the girls play in their football field. And they go and play their football twice a week, and the boys they go and play there once a week, and the boys they go outside and play football or cricket outside. But we still have some indoor activities for the girls, physical activities.

To encourage the young ones to behave and be responsible, each month one child is recognized for their academic accomplishments and setting a model example for others.

The criteria to be child of the month is to be good in your school studies, to be good in taking care of the job, the job assigned by the staff in the orphanage, and how you interact in your daily life with other kids. So you will be selected in fact from the three criteria. This is how to improve their skills, to encourage them.

By employing widows to work at the orphanages, two goals are accomplished – the residents get attention from loving adults and the women are given the opportunity to support themselves and their own children.

Besides helping the children through our program, we would like to help the single mothers or widows through hiring them and giving them jobs. This is one of the priorities of AFCECO, we have many widows working with us here in the orphanage.

Some of them, they can stay with us here in the orphanage again with all these kids. They have their own children as well; their children live in the orphanage. And for instance, we have for the moment 10, 12 widows that live in the orphanage with their kids. Her presence is for the betterment of the children in that particular orphanage.

AFCECO has successfully changed the lives of many. Ms. Farid shared with us the uplifting story of a young girl from Nuristan, a province in northeastern Afghanistan, who joined the orphanage in 2002.

When she joined the orphanage, she was seven years old. She couldn't speak Dari and Pashtu, the two native languages of Afghanistan; she could speak only her own native language, Nuristani, and nobody could understand her. It was very difficult for others to understand her.

And now she can speak five languages. She speaks English very well, she speaks Italian very well, she speaks very fluent Dari and Pashtu, and she still remembers Nuristani. So for now she's in Italy on a scholarship for high school, and she will go to university as well over there. So to come from that, such a background, and be a good leader and lead the women or even the men in the future, is a life change.

In recognition of her selfless efforts and contributions to the education and well-being of Afghan children, Ms. Farid was honored in March 2010 with the 10,000 Women Entrepreneurial Achievement Award at the Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards in Washington D.C., USA.

For me, receiving that award from Vital Voices Global Partnership, means recognition of orphan children and widows in Afghanistan. And I'm really proud of those mothers, really they inspired me. I have seen how much they sacrifice themselves. I have seen many women that, they really work very hard to let themselves survive, but they let their children go to school.

How has this project changed Ms. Farid’s life?

It has really changed many lives, (it) changed my life as well. As a woman to really make a difference in your society, and make a change for the future of the country, it really is powerful and makes me very hopeful for the future.

Ms. Andeisha Farid, we sincerely appreciate your bringing great hope to so many disadvantaged Afghan children through your benevolent work to help them succeed in life.

The change I would like to see is a happy and peaceful future for Afghan people, children. And of course, justice for all people is also one of the things I really would like to see in the future for Afghan people.

Please join us next Sunday on Good People, Good Works for the conclusion of our interview with the courageous Andeisha Farid.

For more details on the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization, please visit www.AFCECO.org

Thank you for your company on today’s program. Coming up next is The World Around Us after Noteworthy News. May Divine love always grace your life.

Today’s Good People, Good Works will be presented in Dari and English, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Auntie Andeisha is a very good woman who accepts all the kids in the orphanage, as her own and never differentiates between her own kids and those of here. And whatever demand or request that we might have had, she has provided it for us…

Halo, benevolent viewers, and welcome to Good People, Good Works on Supreme Master Television. This week’s show is the conclusion of a two-part series highlighting the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization (AFCECO), a non-profit entity based in Kabul, Afghanistan that seeks to nurture and shelter vulnerable Afghan children by providing a safe environment with all basic necessities, including proper education, health care and love.

AFCECO strives to develop the young ones into the country’s next generation of leaders.

Well, I aspire to build an orphanage such as this and this way, the children who are disadvantaged, (I would be able to) provide them with education and lessons…

We have 11 orphanages, so this is one of the orphanages for the girls; only girls live here. We have five orphanages in Kabul, and two in Herat, two in Jalalabad, and we still have two orphanages for Afghan children in Pakistan. So there are 67 girls living in this orphanage.

The organization was founded in 2001 by Ms. Andeisha Farid, an Afghan social entrepreneur who has spent almost her whole childhood and adolescence living in refugee camps.

This 27-year-old woman has gained international recognition for her work and was invited to the April 2010 “Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship” in America, an event hosted by US President Barack Obama to deepen ties between business leaders, foundations, and entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.

During the Summit, President Obama praised Ms. Farid’s work in a speech saying that "… Andeisha Farid, [is] an extraordinary woman from Afghanistan who's taken great risks to educate the next generation, one girl at a time. Together, they point the way to a future where progress is shared and prosperity is sustainable.”

Some of the teachers in the AFCECO orphanages are volunteers. Their backgrounds are diverse, with several being students from Kabul University, Afghanistan while others are from abroad, like North America or Europe.

So, this is Ian Pounds, our volunteer from the United States, who has been with us since last year. So it's almost one year and a half he is with us teaching the kids English, computer, art, and recently he managed our leadership training and the leadership academy which was the first experience for us and it was really amazing for all the girls.

Half of all people in Afghanistan are under the age of 18. So when people want to talk about the future of Afghanistan, it’s right here, it's very close. These children will be adults in a very short time.

If they’re given freedom of their minds, given an education, given love, given security, given health, it can’t help but change the future of Afghanistan. It's very simple math in my view. It's not a leap of faith, it's not a guess, it's not a hope, it’s a simple fact. And so that's why I’m here.

Mr. Pounds is tremendously impressed by the children’s love of learning and has a touching story that clearly demonstrates their thirst for knowledge.

I was very tired, I had been teaching all day long, and I looked at my watch and it was five minutes to 6 o'clock at night, and I said: “Okay, girls, you may go.” And they looked at me with the most astonishing look. “What, Gee.” and I said, “It's time, you may go.” And they said, “What time is it?” I said, “It's five minutes to six”. They said, “We want our five minutes.”

I have never experienced students who asked for their five minutes when they were being let out of the class early. So it’s a little tiny example of what kind of students I encounter here, you know. They're like kids everywhere, they're like students everywhere, but in this respect they are not like students everywhere.

Each orphanage has one to two managers who live there with the children and act as surrogate parents.

We first were refugees in Pakistan, then returned. We didn’t have work or job, then I was informed that there is an orphanage here. I was pleased and wanted to come here and work and do nursing of children and help them in their lessons.

The orphanage is a safe haven for the children, with an atmosphere of peace, love, tolerance, and harmony.

This is one of the bedrooms that the girls live in. So each child has a bed here. So we have 22 girls living in this room, because we have 11 bunk beds here and every child takes one bed. It’s their bedroom, they sleep here, and they study in their library.

They use this open space to study and lay down and do their homework. So they are all studying together, two of them for instance, and helping each other, but this is basically their bedroom where they sleep at night. And during the day they take a nap after coming from school.

Mehan I is one of the largest orphanages in the AFCECO network. The children, whose ages range from 3 to 12, are taught to respect each other regardless of gender, language, religion, race, or color.

We have so many good friends and also they talk to us kindly and We are very close friends…. We don’t fight with each other… Helay is my best friend. She… with the lessons… she helps me (with them) and when she is in trouble I help her… if I am at school, we go and eat the meal together.

In the orphanage we are friends… All the girls are our friends and we treat all of them nicely … those who are my best friends are Helay (who) helps me, Manila also helps me in the lessons because her level is one year higher than mine, they help me, with the lessons. When they have a problem at school, I ask them about it.

AFCECO orphanages also train the children to be responsible and the residents are expected to become productive members of society in the future.

And other thing we would like them to learn something, not be very dependent on others, this is very important for us. We want them to help the cook, to help the house cleaner, to help the woman who does the laundry for them, so that they learn some skills in the orphanage, not be dependent on someone else to do their laundry, because everybody has to take a part to keep themselves clean and keep their facility clean.

The basic daily routine in all AFCECO orphanages is very similar.

Now you have exams. You have to wake up at 4 o’clock, apart from that, when you don’t have exams, how are the rest of the days?

Now we have exams. Once the exams are finished, the wake up time is 6 o’clock for us. We get up, get prepared, and have breakfast. Once breakfast is ready, the person who is on duty prepares the breakfast. We go to school from 7:30 AM up until 11:30 AM. After returning home, from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM we eat our lunch.

After lunch, if we have classes, we go until 4:00 PM. At 4:00 PM when we return, we rest and then evening arrives. Then we eat dinner. From 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM, we watch TV. When the meal is prepared we eat the meal and then return to studying. Football, yes! We have classes daily, and twice a week we play football.

Andeisha Farid wants each child to be healthy and full of energy and thus the menu at the orphanages feature a variety of seasonal fruits and vegetables.

We cook them rice with beans or rice with vegetables. And during the night, they usually take the seasonal vegetables for instance, cauliflowers, eggplant, lady’s finger (okra) and other available vegetables in the market. In the meantime they also have fruits like apples, bananas, pomegranate, watermelon, and melons, and the other fruits available in the market according to the season.

Besides providing them with nutritious food, the health of the orphanage residents is also protected by furnishing the children with readily accessible medical care.

This is the clinic for the orphanage. We have four more orphanages that share the same clinic or health care facility here in Mehan Orphanage. We have a physician that comes three times a week and do a check-up for all the kids in the orphanages.

And we have a first aid class for some of the oldest girls and boys in the orphanages that help others when they need them. We have two students who act as the pharmacists. And they are actually working here and they give the medicine for the prescription written by the physician, and then the physician approves once they give the medicine.

We have learned many things here. Like here we (learned) first aid for injuries. We go to (the other) orphanages and give them medication for ordinary diseases.

AFCECO’s Mehan II orphanage in Kabul shelters around 40 girls ranging in age from 16 to 18.

They have a study room and now we will go and see their computer lab. They have a computer facility here to learn some computer skills as well. This is the computer facility for Mehan Orphanage for all the girls. So they do their homework over here and in the meantime they learn some computer skills. And now, some of them, they have exams, and they are getting prepared by working on the computers.

The problems we have, we can solve them all with this computer and things like… homework from the school, we come and solve them all with the computer.

In conclusion, as we have seen in this two-part series that Andeisha Farid and the AFCECO staff have accomplished much on behalf of Afghan children in need in a very short amount of time. With love and admiration, Supreme Master Ching Hai is honoring Andeisha Farid with the Shining World Compassion Award, along with US$20,000 to further her noble work.

For more details on the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization, please visit www.AFCECO.org

Thank you for your company on today’s program. Coming up next is The World Around Us after Noteworthy News. May we always care for one another as brothers and sisters.