More Jobs Mean Less Violence

Our first full day in Afghanistan was very very full. We began our morning at the Business Council for Peace ,Bpeace, office, with Laila Ahmadzai, our program director in Afghanistan. We partner on the ground with other partners to further our mission and accomplish our work more effectively. BPeace is one such alliance. In 2002, a year after 9/11, a group of American business people asked themselves what they could do to give peace a chance. This question led to the formation of the non-profit Bpeace (Business Council for Peace). The idea was to help women in post-conflict countries build sustainable businesses. The strategy and logic were simple: more jobs mean less violence. Bpeace volunteers set their sights on Afghanistan and traveled there to find women who had operated covert businesses under the Taliban and were emerging as Afghanistan’s new entrepreneurs. The Afghan women who produced this product received pay in accordance with Fair Trade practices, and part of the profit helps women in Bpeace programs grow and prosper, benefiting their families while creating more jobs in their communities. Susanne is a BPeace member on the Rwanda team and Debbie is on the Executive Council and Co-Chair of the Product Marketing team as well as active on the Afghanistan team. I am so impressed with the accociates progress since the Style Road Trip in New York. We had an awesome reunion with Habiba at the B Peace office who was so excited that she got her passport. She has been accepted to a mini MBA program at Thunderbird. She also was sharing about her daycare which is growing to now have 29 kids.