This is Nasrat Khalid, the founder of Aseel. If you are receiving this note, I am confident that you are an amazing person; you have either helped somebody with basic necessities of life (Do Good) or bought a handmade product (Buy Good) that’s proceeds directly went to a community and an artisan that deserved and needed it.

As you made all this impact, you also helped create and expand the Aseel platform in its infancy. Today, Aseel is featured in NPR in an Article written by Ruchi Kumar, which is excellent news for us at Aseel Team. I wanted to share the link with you since you made everything we have achieved possible.

While the article is optimistic and portrays excellent progress, we are nowhere closer to solving the issues we want to solve. The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is worsening, more communities and countries are at risk, and we are nowhere close to empowering women, artisans, and communities to have a fair shot at opportunities. Aseel as a platform is still nowhere close to getting the backing and growth that can guarantee widespread impact globally. Our list of pending beneficiaries that are already provided with Omid (Hope) ID cards and verified in Afghanistan has reached over 15,000 pending families.

What we have successfully achieved and for what I am incredibly thankful is that we have piloted and succeeded at creating a different approach, a different tribe, and a different mindset that has enabled us to support over 350,000 people in the Afghanistan crisis and hundreds of artisans who sold their products to people who would have never been able to access them before.

I want to close with our commitment to you, our early backers. We will ensure that it is within our company’s DNA to know that people all over the world care and that if communities anywhere in the world are at-risk or going through a crisis as we expand, we will not only find ways but also make ways to help people. We will do it with passion, humility, and integrity. 

Nasrat Khalid