RRU students get inside look at Canadian humanitarian efforts

(Photo Caption: Foreign affairs officer Karen Foss says Canada`s role in Afghanistan is unmatched by other wealthy nations.)

Canadian reconstruction projects across Afghanistan are making a difference in the Afghan people’s often gruelling lives, says a Canadian foreign affairs officer.

“Afghanistan is known for being the least developed and most poor country in the world,” Karen Foss, with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, told Royal Roads University communications students.. “I look at Afghanistan and know that there is potential for growth.”

Foss joined DFAIT in 2001 and began serving in the South Asia Division. She worked as a desk officer in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In the spring of 2007 Foss was stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan and worked there for 13 months as the deputy political director of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team.

People working in public service jobs such as diplomats, development workers, civilian police and corrections officers work each day under risk and under threat, Foss said.

“Afghanistan is fairly pragmatic,” Foss said. “People in Kandahar are used to living with war, poverty and drought.”

When the current Afghan war began in 2001, 700,000 boys attended school while zero girls did. Now Foss said there are four million boys in the school system along with two million girls.

“Canada is playing a role that is not happening (by) other countries,” Foss said. “Three projects Canada has signed on to was the rehabilitation of the Dahla dam, to build 50 schools and to eradicate polio by 2011. These are realistic objectives. Canadians want to be part of a country that lives up to it responsibility and I felt I had to do my part.”

The biggest misconceptions Canadians have about Afghanistan are the people itself, Foss said.

“Afghans are smart, strong and committed people.”