Child Protection Afghanistan Project #51330

Afghanistan

by Mobile Mini Circus for Children

Project Report | Nov 19, 2025
37 Young Women & Men

By MMCC | Team

Dear Friend,

Seventeen young women and twenty young men are now leading Social Circus teams that bring hope, joy, and fun to thousands of children across Afghanistan. Their semi-independent Social Circus teams are in Kabul, Herat, Nuristan, Nangarhar, Helmand, Khost, Laghman, Daykundi, Ghor, Bamyan, Paktiya, Konar, Ghazni, and Zabul. Each team has its own name, logo, equipment, artists, students, weekly rehearsals, and occasional performances tailored to its local community. The teams have many different entertaining, social, cultural, and even emergency activities. On 31 August, a 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, causing significant damage. Some of our teams from Nuristan and Nangarhar brought their performances, workshops, and collective games to children in the Kunar earthquake area, bringing joy, laughter, and hope to ease their trauma.

As our Herat Center continues to thrive thanks to your generous support, we are now merging all our fundraisers in Afghanistan into one unified campaign to give us greater flexibility. Our Herat Center is now more active and vibrant than ever before. Together with our dedicated staff and the children, the center has expanded to host new activities for returnees. Over one million Afghans have been forced to return from Iran under extremely harsh conditions in the last few months. Among them are many children who were born in Iran and have never lived in Afghanistan. They arrive not only traumatized by the journey but also fearful of what awaits them in an unfamiliar homeland. Our Social Circus teams warmly welcome these children with performances, collective games, and fun workshops.

Thanks to your generous support, we have been able to mobilize the resources of our Herat Center to take on an emergency project for 625 families. This new initiative, financed separately by the Danish Emergency Relief Fund (DERF), is possible only because the center and its team are already in place. Through the project, our team carefully identified and supported the 625 families most in need of financial support while also ensuring that their children are connected with our activities.

Our teams use every opportunity to reach and uplift children, whether performing in the park or even in a mosque where mothers gather with their daughters for registration and surveys. To go further, we have now created a special new Social Circus team dedicated to returnee children, helping them make friends, play, and find comfort among other Afghan kids.

Your generosity makes all this possible. Thank you for bringing joy, hope, and healing to so many children in need.

Please share this report within your network to bring more attention to the fun and hope needed in Afghanistan.

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Jul 7, 2025
Roots of Resilience + Fun

By MMCC | Team

Once again, we have overcome recent challenges and are now not only back on track, but stronger and more organized than ever. After a temporary pause, all our activities have resumed, this time under a completely new system that aligns with our national network structure.

Instead of operating a single, centralized team in our Herat center, we now have four semi-independent teams (two boys' teams and two girls' teams) working in separate shifts. This structure makes it much easier to manage, monitor, and support the work, while also placing more responsibility and ownership directly in the hands of Afghan youth themselves.

These four teams, comprising 90 girls and 110 boys, function similarly to our total of 37 teams across the country. Each has its own independent Facebook page to help with promotion, transparency, and visibility (in addition to our internal reporting system). You can follow their work here:

Across all 17 provinces where we operate, our 37 teams remain highly active. In addition to social circus, they are involved in a wide range of activities, including educational theatre, school subject support, community performances, and various social service initiatives.

Right now, we are in the process of responding to an urgent humanitarian situation: many traumatized children and families are being forcibly returned from Pakistan and Iran. Our teams are deeply committed, well-prepared, and ready to assist in welcoming them home. They have successfully carried out similar emergency responses in the past, such as during the earthquake in Herat and the flooding in Ghor.

We are calling for your continued support. Any donations, connections, or sharing of this message would be deeply appreciated. With your help, we can deliver emergency aid packages and provide much-needed psychosocial support to the returning refugees, especially vulnerable children and families.

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Feb 24, 2025
Hope in Hardship

By MMCC | Team

Dear friend,

Good news first: Despite many challenges and restrictions, it is still possible—and actively happening—that over one thousand children participate in our fun and meaningful activities in Afghanistan. We currently have 37 social circus teams organizing activities several times weekly across 17 provinces, 14 of these teams are led by female team leaders, with hundreds of girls still engaged in our programs.

While the boys in both Nangarhar, Ghor, and many more places in Afghanistan continue to make public shows for thousands of audiences, and the girls in Yakawlang, Badakshan, and Helmand miraculously continue to find ways to meet, juggle, and have fun, we are though unfortunately facing increasing challenges, both in some of the regions and particularly at our main center in Herat city.

Our Herat Center has been serving hundreds of girls and boys for the past three years, offering a range of recreational, fun, and educational activities. Throughout this time, we have continuously adapted to new restrictions, finding compromised solutions to continue supporting as many girls as possible. However, in the past few months, the restrictions imposed by the authorities have exceeded our ability to adjust.

Restrictions such as age limits for the girls and limitations on activities has already since long been a reality. With new restrictions including that no female staff are permitted in NGOs, in early January we had to send home both the female teachers and the female cook in our center in Herat.

We are not the only NGO affected by these restrictive measures, but we are among the few organizations still actively finding ways to adapt and continue most of our work.

Here is an article explaining some of the challenges we and other NGOs face in Afghanistan:
AP News: Taliban-imposed restrictions on NGOs

Current Status:
At the moment, our Herat center is temporarily closed, until March 21st, which marks the start of the new Afghan year. While we are considering the best way forward for our operations in Herat, all other activities implemented by our 37 brave team leaders continue as usual.

We deeply appreciate your continued support which is essential for providing us the much-needed flexibility to adjust to any given situation in one of the world’s most challenging environments, especially for girls. While preparing to restart the activities in Herat, we still have ongoing costs to maintain the center. We will keep you updated on our progress.

Thank you for standing with Afghan children—especially girls—during these challenging times.

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