Clean blankets for Afghan orphans

It started with an email which Merita Ahmeti, Contracting Manager of Ecolog AG, received one day. It came from the leader of the German CIMIC unit in Kabul, 1st Lieutenant Raoul Strutz, and was about the ALAHUDDIN orphanage in Kabul. And about blankets - the bed clothes used by the orphans there. The bed clothes had been in use for more than a year. They urgently needed cleaning, but the orphanage could not afford the cost. CIMICs attend to problems like this, acting as intermediaries.

It was an obvious idea to ask Ecolog for help - a prime address in Kabul when laundry service is needed. It is one of the company´s specialties to provide on-site laundry services in company-owned facilities for multinational task forces in Afghanistan. Of course, also for the German Federal Armed Forces.

The company reacted very quickly. Coordination between the German CIMIC, the German ISAF-task force, and Ecolog took only a few days. Soldiers of the German task force in Kabul took care of the transport of the blankets between the orphanage and the Ecolog laundry facilities in trucks of the German Federal Armed Forces.

In this way, as much as 400 blankets were cleaned and brought back again the next day, in two charges of 200 blankets each, in quick succession in September 2005.

Bujar Ahmeti, an Ecolog-employee who was involved in the coordination of the action on site: "When I saw the blankets, I told our laundry staff: ‘Even if we have to wash them three times - I want the orphans to get spotlessly clean bed clothes back.' We used our industry machines. The cleaning operation for the orphanage was carried out completely in line with our usual service standards. After cleaning and drying, each single blanket was individually packed in transparent plastics."

1st Lieutenant Raoul Strutz, the German CIMIC who had initiated the operation, accompanied the transport of the blankets back to the Alahuddin orphanage: "Sometimes it is shaking to realize what an orphan in Afghanistan really lacks. You can think of all sorts of deprivation, but you hardly ever think of the fact that such a child even lacks a mere piece of toilet paper or a clean bed cloth. All the things we take for granted - but, unfortunately, cannot be taken for granted at all by too many people in the world. By the way, a soldier on international deployment would have the same problems - from lacking toilet paper to having his clothes cleaned - if there weren't service providers like Ecolog who take care of such matters."

Ecolog does not only clean laundry. Laundry services are part of the company´s core competencies, but in addition to that, Ecolog offers a complete range of mobile infrastructural services: from portable toilets across waste and waste water management to fresh water provision, catering, container, construction, and communication. Since the beginning of the ISAF-mission, the company has been operating very successfully as a service partner of multinational task forces in Afghanistan.

Ecolog has already supported former CIMIC activities with its core competencies. For example, the building of a septic tank for an Afghan school in March 2005.