FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT
Voice: 626-676-7884
E-mail: info_at_afghanwomensmission.org
A medley of musical performers, from classical to rock and roll, will hold a benefit concert for the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, on February 2, 2002 at 8:00 at the Birmingham Unitarian Church in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Mark Gottlieb, the event’s organizer, will perform his string composition, “I’ll Never Return,” during a reading of a poem of the same title by Meena, founder of RAWA who was executed by fundamentalists while working for Afghan women’s rights in 1987.
Performers include concert pianist and Grammy Nominee Pauline Martin, Brazilian soprano Mirna Rubim, folk artist Jan Krist, soprano Pamela Schiffer, jazz guitarist Bob Tye with vocalist Liz Larin and the rock and roll of Stewart Francke. Piper Kenton Smith will perform on the Small Scottish Bagpipes. Members of the Michigan Opera Theater Orchestra will also appear.
“I admire RAWA for their desire to live in a democratic and secular society, and I hope the proceeds from the concert will help,” said Gottleib. Proceeds will be used for educational materials at schools for Afghan women and girls in refugee camps in Pakistan.
Meena, a native of Kabul, laid the foundations of RAWA when she started a campaign against the Russian forces and their regime in 1979 and organized numerous processions and meetings in schools, colleges and Kabul University to mobilize public opinion. She later established schools for refugee children, a hospital and handicraft centers for refugee women in Pakistan to support Afghan women financially. She launched a bilingual magazine, Payam-e-Zan (Women’s Message) in 1981. Her active social work and effective advocacy against fundamentalist views provoked her assassination by agents of the Afghanistan branch of KGB when she was just 30 years old.
The Afghan Women’s Mission, an organization dedicated to working with the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, is a group of people moved to action by the plight of Afghan women. The mission was founded in January 2000 in response to the compelling need for adequate hospital facilities in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan.
The Birmingham Unitarian Church is located at 38651 Woodward Avenue in Bloomfield Hills, MI.
More information about the plight of Afghan refugees is available on the RAWA website, http://www.rawa.org.
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