PATTERNS OF CHANGE
AFGHANISTAN

Afghan Hands

How the American high-end fashion business is creating a design for a better life for the widows of the decades of conflict in Afghanistan.

“The first time I bought them in they were shocked by the sheerness of these things… and they were shaking their heads, saying ‘These Americans – I don’t know what they want!’”

The conflicts in Afghanistan over the last 30 years have caused up to 2 million deaths – creating a generation of widows and orphans in the country. But Matin Maulawizada, whose own family escaped to the USA during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, has returned to the country of his birth to help some of these widows. Arriving from the US bearing designs commissioned by a niche-market fashion house, his company, Afghan Hands, capitalizes on the skill of these women with a needle and thread and is now not only earning them an income, but teaching them literacy and numeracy as well.