In Afghanistan, soldiers see a lot of stuff that they wouldn’t normally see - poverty and pain and sadness in a population already devastated by decades of war. And sometimes you don’t even have to leave the base to see it - Afghan kids hang around the outer edges of Kandahar airfield
Lieutenant Rene, one of the Dutch soldiers based on Kandahar, was so struck by these kids that he decided to do something. He thinks the reconstruction program is great… but it’s also slow. So he and a few other military personnel got together to help these kids. They are trying to raise ten thousand dollars to give to the charity War Child. They’re also getting goods from Dutch organisations… and getting the military to ship them into the area.
This initiative is personal, not army-related, and they’re constantly coming up with new ways to get military personal to donate money. A few weeks ago they organized a party and a lottery, but they won’t stop there. “Who knows,” says Rene, “maybe we’ll ask people to put up money to see the press officer sing a song… All we want is to raise the ten thousand dollars.”
Listen to my interview with Lieutenant Rene here.
Find out more about the charity War Child here (Dutch) and here (English).
And watch the War Child video below.
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