This Valentine’s Day, instead of giving your sweetheart a box of chocolates (and an extra five pounds weight gain), you can show how big your heart really is and send your love far past the boundaries of North Georgia.
On Feb. 8 and 9, Bears Oh My and Baraka Photos will sponsor a show and sale to benefit Afghanistan, “Love Goes ‘Round the World.” You can buy an Afghan gift that is beautifully unique and, at the same time, support schools and a public news service to educate children and adults in Afghanistan.
A wide range of handcrafted Afghan gifts will be on sale that weekend: natural herbal soaps, lapis jewelry, embroidered blouses and vests, traditional hats and wool scarves. ALL profit from these sales will be sent directly to schools in Afghanistan.
The soaps are hand-crafted at Arghand cooperative in southern Afghanistan, which was founded by former NPR reporter Sarah Chayes, recently featured in the Atlantic Monthly.
Photography showing off the beauty of Afghanistan will also be for sale, with images by Big Canoe resident Lisa Schnellinger / Baraka Photos and by the Afghan women and men who work for Pajhwok Afghan News, the country’s first independent news agency. All profit from the photo sales will go to support Pajhwok’s news services.
Schnellinger and her husband, Tom Willard, created and launched Pajhwok in 2004 as a national source of reliable news and information. The start-up was funded with US tax dollars (USAID), but the news agency has worked hard to become self-sufficient, Schnellinger said.
“Already Pajhwok gets half its operating costs from subscriptions, ads, photos, and donations. We’re trying to help them find new revenue sources so that they can be fully independent.”
(Pajhwok means “echo” or “reflection” in both Dari and Pashto, the national languages of Afghanistan. “Baraka” means “gift”, “blessing” or “divine essence” in several languages of the region.)
The next education project will be to build a roof on the library of a girl’s school in Logar Province, and pay to hire at least one new teacher.
Schnellinger’s sister and brother-in-law, who visited them in Kabul and became very attached to the country, offered to help rebuild the rural school when it was attacked and burned down.
The new school now has more than 800 pupils, some of whom walk 45 minutes each way to attend classes. Despite the dangers, “they will not stay away,” Schnellinger said. “They’ll do anything to get an education.”
Bears Oh My will be open from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. both days of the sale.
