One Table: 
Invest in Afghanistan's mothers

Storai Sadat, a former Mercy Corps employee, is the Executive Director of Ariana Financial Services. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

Zahria, a 35-year-old mother of five, took out a loan from Afghanistan’s Mercy Corps-supported Ariana Financial Services to begin an almond-selling business. Learn more about Zahria on One Table › Photo: Miguel Samper/Mercy Corps

After years of war and oppression, the mothers of Afghanistan can now step out of their homes and into the marketplace. Even under the cloud of continued instability, the local bazaars here are teeming with confident, savvy entrepreneurs selling their wares. They are working mothers who give every ounce of themselves to support their families, just like mothers everywhere.

In 2003, Mercy Corps established one of Afghanistan’s first microfinance programs, called Ariana Financial Services, to invest in the talents of these women. Ariana offers small loans at reasonable interest rates. Today, more than 45,000 clients – most of them women – have been able to start or expand a business, earn a living, and take care of their families. They’re part of the 154,000 women that Mercy Corps is currently helping with loans, business training and other valuable financial services.

Lending to women improves the lives of entire households. When you lend to a man, it’s hard to tell if that money goes much deeper than his own pockets. Women, on the other hand, spend their extra earnings on food, education and other necessities for their families. Sometimes they even share loans with their husbands to support family businesses.

Microfinance helps mothers, who in turn build stronger, healthier families and communities. I see this truth played out everyday with the women Ariana serves.

Parwin, a seamstress in Kabul, used earnings from her business to send her two teenage daughters to school for the first time. They help their widowed mother apply beads onto colorful dresses during the day and then run off to classes in the afternoon.

Widows comprise about half of Ariana’s clients. After losing their husbands to war, they have become the sole breadwinners in their family, and many live in desperate poverty.

In another family, Fatima and her husband Hassan used her $660 loan to open a bookstore. They quickly packed the shelves with math textbooks and old volumes of poetry. Before opening the bookstore, the couple scraped by on $4 a day. Now their income has doubled.

“We were only eating once or twice a day," says 60-year-old Fatima. "Now we eat three times a day."

In keeping with Mercy Corps’ philosophy of providing local solutions for local needs, Afghan women —not Western consultants — are the ones driving our microlending business forward. Virtually all of our loan officers are women, as are most of the program managers, tellers and marketers. As Ariana’s Executive Director, I hear many reports on women who have made great strides with their businesses, like the client who can now export her handmade kites to Pakistan and Iran, or another who made enough money from selling her homemade jams and pickles to open a grocery store.

I am cheered by these stories of progress, and they spur me toward our goal of expanding Ariana throughout the country to serve more women. The din of terrible violence in Afghanistan hasn’t quieted yet, but I’m confident that we will successfully rebuild our country — one mother at a time.