A plea from Kabul:
I know this is probably going to be hidden by the AI algorithms we've been struggling so much with recently. But we need to be seen right now, so I'll give it the old college try and beg Facebook to just show our pleas for help to the many people who support us and really do want to know what's going on here. The urgency is as real as a scream in the dark. So if you see this, please read to the end.
The entire KSAR Team, our management and our staff, all of us are committed without hesitation to ensuring the current and continued safety of our staff, the survival of our animals, and the open doors of these shelters and hospitals we've fought so hard to build from nothing with sweat and blood and heart.
Right now it is late at night and quiet in Kabul, and we are grateful. We are also aware that could change in a matter of seconds and without warning. We're as ready for that possibility as we can be and calm because of those preparations. But the ongoing economic free fall, supply shortages, and cost inflation resulting from nearly all of the borders of Afghanistan closed due to conflict---this causes constant dread. It is hard, really f*cking hard. We are struggling to stay afloat now and to find adequate resources for the immediate future. We truly need continued and profound help to manage this and survive, and we don't for how long. Thinking in months is more realistic than thinking in days or weeks.
I am grateful to the core that none of our staff or animals were harmed in the airstrikes in Kabul that just one week ago killed so many civilians, including hundreds of patients at a hospital just a few miles away. We were lucky. We can grieve with the community suffering around us now, we do. We can hope and pray that it doesn't happen again. But we are powerless to prevent intentional violence of that magnitude, completely.
What we can do now, what we have to do, is stay afloat, feed the souls in our care, protect the voiceless lives that depend on us, insist that those lives matter with our own voices. And just as important, we need to lift up our staff and their families so that they can weather these shortages without hunger or fear of hunger. These force majeure moments--this is when promises matter, community and responsibility matter. So we simply can't fail.
Please help us pull through this. It won't be forever, we'll get on our feet again. But right now we're not. The links below are a few concrete immediate needs. Every donation makes a difference. And we need your voices, your care, your effort. We need you.
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mygivingcircle.org/kabul-sma…