Support Us

Rahmatullah Hamraz

When Rahmatullah married an illiterate girl from a conservative family living in a marginalized and impoverished community in Afghanistan, he came face to face with the utter lack of opportunities she had growing up amid catastrophic conflict in the country. He encouraged her to learn to read and write and become financially independent by mastering the art of tailoring. Through his work with the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program (APRP) in the country’s remote and underdeveloped communities, he realized many internally displaced women are faced with the same circumstances as his wife. Deeply moved by this situation, he organized an international team and established the National Center for Peace and Democracy to draw and implement solutions to some of these pressing problems while studying at the University of Chicago as an Obama Foundation Scholar. Now, as a Blossom Hill Fellow, he is enrolling conflict-affected women in a program that will enable them to become literate and earn a livelihood through tailoring.