Island group hoping to reunite young Afghan woman with her family

When Arifa was growing up in Afghanistan she strived to earn top marks and fulfill her mom’s dream for her to become a doctor.

“[I wanted to] give back all the kindness and all the love and support I got,” Arifa says. “And make her happy.”

She was no doubt proud when her daughter earned a scholarship to attend a secondary school in Canada. But studying here changed Arifa’s perspective on things.

“I wasn’t in that prison of only focusing on one thing,” Arifa says. “I didn’t want to be a doctor anymore.”

Arifa discovered a passion and aptitude for other subjects, including economic and political science, which she hoped to share with her family in Afghanistan after she graduated.

But then she was told what was happening after the Taliban took over.

“I feel scared of not being able to go back,” Artifa says, fighting back tears.

Now that Arifa was a western-educated woman, she feared she could be a target back home, especially since her family is Hazara, an ethnic minority group.

“I felt like I lost everything back home,” she says, before dropping her head and crying.

Her dad was killed. And recently, her mom, sister, and brother fled to hide in Pakistan.

Arifa desperately searched for some way to help from Canada.

“I had no idea [how],” she says. “And what it takes to do it.”

But then somebody heard Arifa’s story, who told it to someone else, and so on, until a group of friends and neighbours experienced in supporting refugees committed to helping reunite the fractured family in Canada.

“If her mother, brother, and sister make it here, and we hope that’s maybe even in a month or two, we need to support them for a year,” says Jim Sparling, one of the members of the group helping Arifa.

The Reuniting Afghan Families group is staging a series of fundraisers, including an event on June 22 at the Moka House in Cadboro Bay, which features live music, a silent auction, and a prize raffle.

Arifa says she’s now feeling, “more hopeful and relived.”

She now has the opportunity to focus on working two retail jobs to save up for university, which she’s planning to attend in B.C. this fall. Although she’s unsure of her major, Arifa is hoping to pursue a profession that would feel even more purposeful to her than being a doctor.

“I want to work in a field where I can help people who are in my situation,” Arifa says.

To pay forward the kindness of strangers, make her mom happy, and most importantly make herself proud.

“It makes me feel like I’m worth something,” she smiles.