International Herald Tribune
The Ashahi Shimbun International Division

Weekend Beat
Practical, fantastical aid gives Afghan children reason to hope

09/17/2005
By YUKO YAMADA:Staff Writer

The intense curiosity Jin Boo Ja saw in the eyes of children in Afghanistan changed the former editor's life.
In December 2002, Jin, working as a volunteer, visited the Spin Boldak camp for internally displaced persons along Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan. A Pakistani medical group was treating injured refugees there.
The camp was set up for Afghans fleeing the war between the country's Taliban overlords and the United States and its Afghan allies.
"I'll never forget the children's intense stares-they seemed to be yearning for a glimpse of the outside world," says Jin, who now heads the nonprofit organization Like Water Press. "They lived in a wasteland without lights or radios."
After returning from her trip, Jin asked herself what she could do to help. After decades of warfare, the country quickly sapped its children of hope. She decided she would try to restore their capacity to dream.



In February 2003, Jin set up Like Water Press with three acquaintances, including two former colleagues from an editorial production company she used to work for.
Based in Tokyo's Toshima Ward, Like Water Press was officially recognized as an NPO in April 2004. Drawing on her network of media contacts, her editorial and writing skills, Jin created The Mobile Image Theater.
Partly inspired by the mobile clinic she saw on her first trip to Afghanistan, Jin's Image Theater operates out of a van, traveling between refugee camps, screening fantasy films made by Like Water Press.
The first tour took place in September 2003. The mobile theater has visited Afghanistan several times since.
Jin wrote two of the three stories for the short fantasy animation films she produced in collaboration with a visual director and an illustrator.
The films, which incorporate real landscapes and illustrations, portray a rabbit's adventure; the life story of an old tree; and a boy who lives in a wasteland and dreams about a girl living near the ocean.
Jin noticed most of the children at the camps were barefoot or wore old, worn shoes. In July 2004, the NPO started a campaign to raise money to buy shoes for the children, raising about 2 million yen in Japan.
The group distributed shoes in March at an orphanage. They brought 150 pairs with them and bought more in Afghanistan at about $3 (330 yen) a pair.
During each tour, about 1,000 children at refugee camps or education centers receive new shoes after having their feet measured by a local shoe retailer. "Wearing shoes that fit helps the children's sense of pride," the 39-year-old NPO representative says.
From June 17 through July 1, Jin and two other members of Like Water Press visited two camps and three NGO-run education centers in Afghanistan. They also visited a rehabilitation center for children who have committed crimes. The films-viewed by more than 800 kids-were narrated in Dari and Pashto by two local volunteers.
At the same time, Jin and her colleagues distributed about 1,000 pairs of shoes, as well as handing out transistor radios and cosmetics to teenagers and young adults at a job training center.
Like Water Press set up another fund this year after Jin met Eltamas Said Qasim, a bright 13-year-old girl at one of the refugee camps. Eltamas and her family fled Afghanistan under the Taliban regime and crossed into Pakistan.
After they returned to Afghanistan in 2001, her father and eldest brother were killed in the fighting. Eltamas was 10 at the time of their deaths.
"When I asked her what her dream was, she said she wanted to become a history teacher and discover what was going on in the world," Jin says.
Jin visited Eltamas' mother and offered about $300 a year to help her purchase school textbooks, a uniform and a satchel for her daughter. The NPO now hopes to support 10 children a year-all with aspirations like Eltamas-through a special fund it has named after the girl.
The plight of displaced Afghan children is something Jin, a second-generation Korean resident in Japan, says she can relate to.
Born in Tochigi Prefecture in 1966, Jin grew up in a big family with five sisters and one brother. She recalls her parents saying they felt as if they were refugees in a foreign country. While they never talked of their fear, anxiety and frustration, Jin says she could always feel it.
Her parents tended to put priority on family ties and sometimes complained about Jin's desire to socialize with kids her own age.
"Whenever I wanted to meet with people outside the home, some family members became upset," Jin says. "But I couldn't help myself and went out as much as possible."
Jin did her best to be herself, spending a lot of time reading and writing. But she ultimately had to adapt to fit in with her surroundings.
When she visited Afghanistan for the first time and looked the children in the eyes, it immediately brought back feelings she remembered from her own childhood-a childhood often filled with rejection.
After graduating from a private high school in Tokyo, Jin entered Nihon University and majored in literature. After graduating in March 1988, she went to Seoul, where she spent 1 years studying Korean at a language school run by Yonsei University.
The trip to South Korea and the language study were intended to cement her identity as a Korean. She says she failed, ending up alienated from the Korean people. She says she began to see herself as neither Japanese nor Korean, but as a "refugee" who didn't belong anywhere.
From the mid-1990s to 2000, Jin visited well-known ruins in Vietnam, Cambodia, Peru and other nations to shoot footage for a series of videos for the company she worked for.
She says she was always aware of the curious children staring at her, but had no idea how to respond.
In 2001, several months after her company folded, the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. Shocked by the incident, Jin decided to work overseas as a volunteer.
"I felt I couldn't come to grips with the terrible things happening in the world unless I took action," Jin says. "I had to get out there in the world and find out what really happened."
Now, when she takes action, she rarely wastes time by stopping to think first. One of her planned projects is to make a movie about how displaced children recover from wars.
When Jin returned to a refugee camp during her last visit to Afghanistan, the young children were overjoyed to see her again.
"They are waiting for someone to look at them, to hug them, to show them some affection," she says. "I would be very happy if I could stay there."

See < www.likewater-press.org/ > for information on how to donate to either the barefoot childrens' campaign or the Eltamas fund.(IHT/Asahi: September 17,2005)