While Flora MacDonald's presentation Jan. 25 was largely centered around rebuilding a nation, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs noted something special about the Bamiyan Province in Afghanistan.
“There’s always sunshine in these high mountains,” MacDonald told about 100 Carleton students in Azrieli Theatre at Carleton.
In her presentation, entitled “Leadership in a Destitute Country,” MacDonald spoke about her trip to Afghanistan with Future Generations Canada, a charitable organization that offers services and aid to the people of Afghanistan.
In 2001, MacDonald gathered a team of two Afghan-Americans and two Afghan-Canadians to assist in the navigation of her travels, she said.
“The roads were in such bad shape that the trip from Kabul to Bamiyan took 25 minutes by plane and 10 hours by car,” she explained.
On one of her voyages, MacDonald said she was held at gunpoint, but she focused her lecture on the accomplishments that can be achieved with continued support by organizations like Future Generations of Canada.
“We have to remember that Afghanistan is not everything you see in Kandahar,” Macdonald said.
Future Generations Canada provides aid by refurbishing schools and educating locals on the use of environmentally friendly resources to generate energy. MacDonald helped to install solar panels in the Bamiyan province.
Her group also helped to plant 980,000 trees that would be burned to heat the homes of those without fuel.
MacDonald also discussed Afghan women’s increased right to enter politics, an impossible occurrence just a few years ago.
“There are now four female Shurahs throughout the country,” she explained. “A Shurah presides over different councils and towns as a political representative of the area.”
Female political figures are still not widely accepted in Afghanistan but, according to MacDonald, there is progress in the area.
Aqeela Somani, a fourth-year economic development student who attended the lecture, said she enjoyed the opportunity to learn about MacDonald’s charitable work.
“I am really interested in developmental work,” Somani said. “This [lecture] gave students, even those who aren’t studying in this particular field, a chance to learn something new about the experiences of others hoping to effect change.”
MacDonald said she wanted to inspire international development by speaking about the reality outside the scope of university.
“We are only taught so much in history classes and this gives us a very limited view,” MacDonald said. “We mustn’t lose sight of the separate influences throughout civilization that aren’t taught in classes.”