Hand in Hand partners with German government in Afghanistan

30 Oct 2017

Imagine if during the 2015-’16 migrant crisis some 50 million people, not 3 million, arrived on Europe’s shores, hungry and desperate for work. Now imagine if Europe was one of the poorest places on Earth, lacking even the most basic services required to keep up.

That, proportionately, is the problem facing Afghanistan, the world’s largest source of refugees for more than three decades, which today faces the inverse problem: the world’s largest returnee crisis, with some 2.5 million people expected back in the country this year and next.

Last month, Hand in Hand partnered with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the German government’s development agency, to help 500 such returnees and internally displaced persons work their way towards a prosperous, sustainable future in the country’s growing poultry value chain. The four-month project is, admittedly, a drop in the ocean. But by working with GIZ to tailor our programmes to the specific needs of returnees and IDPs, Hand in Hand is setting the stage for future work with this rapidly growing and chronically under-jobbed cohort.

By the numbers

Project budget: US $230,000

Jobs created: 500

Lives improved: 2,875