GLOBAL ROOTS

Earlier this year Global Roots was granted access to 42 orphaned girls in Afghanistan— one of the most forsaken and abused subset of children on the planet. How and why Global Roots of all organizations — was the first to be allowed direct contact with the caregivers of orphaned girls in Afghanistan requires thousands of words and photos.

But for the sake of this profile, please accept the following summary.

For just 10K — or $238 per girl — we managed to rescue 42 girls from daily, unmonitored and unprotected physical labor. Orphaned by war, these girls were take in by families who are already too stretched to feed, clothe and school their own children. This makes is an unwritten social contract for orphaned girls to pay for themselves, no matter their age. They either have to do hard labor in the field or work as “vendors” collecting cardboard or plastic in the streets. Both jobs expose them to harsh environmental conditions and the risk of Taliban abduction is a constant threat. Neither job produce enough money to protect them for what is coming: forced, early marriage.

Working with our main man on the ground in Afghanistan (who has managed our "Children’s Garden" for the last three years), we created a tailoring academy for 42 orphaned girls who live with impoverished families just outside of Faizabad.

The girls graduated from the program recently and they went home with their own sewing machine and fully equipped sewing kit. We will continue to help them so that they can sell their creations (90% of all female clothing in Afghanistan is made locally) and use the funds to protect themselves from early marriage. Sadly, another implicit social arrangement in war-torn Afghanistan is that their caregivers are allowed to sell them for a dowry at any point. This is why they take them in.

A secret hook of the program is that we can now track the girls to make sure they are safe by sending Wahaj and one of our female teachers/counselors to check on their welfare!

All 42 girls can now go to school and they will have the funds to go onto college and, one day, pick their own life partner.

The Maasai girls' Gardens will be part of an after-school gardening program. The vegetables from our first Maasai Girls' Garden will be taken home by the girls who grow them and presented to their parents as a weekly family gift. Parents who take part in this program, which will provide them with ten years of free produce, must agree to keep their daughters in school, not subject them to female genital mutilation (FGM) and not sell them into marriage at 13 years of age. Our first Maasai Girl’s Garden features the construction of a giant greenhouse that will keep elephants away and accelerate the growth of vegetables including tomatoes, green peppers and kale.

In working to improve the chances of survival for the world's most exploited children, we realized that things can get better for them if poor farmers can somehow make more money on the crops they grow.

Last year, Silicon Valley reached out to Global Roots with a small scale farming app that will flatten the playing field for small scale farmers worldwide.

We give farmers the tech and logistics they need to improve their lives and protect their bio-diverse farms from the modern industrial farming threat.