About Us

Our Vision

To minimize the suffering of women and children due to geopolitics and insufficient international engagement and aid.

Our Values

To serve people in need regardless of their faith or ethnicity. To provide care in unsafe and unstable conflict zones. To have compassion for those who have suffered unspeakable loss. To protect and never exploit those in need.

About

Our Culture is Giving was founded in October 2021 by Leslie Merriman, who serves as its executive director. Prior to the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan in August 2021, Leslie was a volunteer with the Washington, DC, chapter of No One Left Behind, an organization supporting America’s wartime allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, specifically the interpreters and U.S. government employees who were eligible for Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) programs to the United States.

Leslie established a pipeline of volunteers and donors and helped welcome and settle hundreds of refugee families arriving in the DC metro area. When America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan began, Leslie reached back to resources in the Afghan volunteer community to help coordinate evacuation efforts for the Afghans who had helped the United States and were at great risk for retaliation by the country’s returning Taliban government.

Working from her home in the United States, Leslie coordinated with volunteers from No One Left Behind, Task Force Pineapple, Operation North Star, Flanders Fields, Operation Recovery and a range of individuals and small groups to help evacuate more than 200 at-risk people from Afghanistan, including U.S. citizens, green card holders and SIV recipients.

Our Culture is Giving is the result of a merger with an Afghanistan-based humanitarian nonprofit (name withheld for staff safety) that provides humanitarian assistance for the at-risk Afghans who left behind. The organization’s name stems from the belief that giving to others is an essential aspect of any successful culture and society.

Our Culture is Giving provides medical care, establishes safe houses, delivers food and helps Afghans with the documentation requirements for visa applications. The organization’s free, mobile medical clinic has served thousands of women and children in locations throughout Afghanistan, especially in the non-Pashtun areas of Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen and Hazara. Such ethnic regions suffer under the Taliban in far greater ways than the nation as a whole due to ethnic persecutions, mass killings, forced population displacements, extensive restrictions on women, deep poverty and skyrocketing rates of child labor. 

As sexual assaults of women and children at the hands of the Taliban are rampant, requests for Our Culture is Giving’s mobile medical clinics often come from tribal elders and imams seeking urgent care for vulnerable members of their communities. Ethnic minorities are especially targeted, as are Afghans who have family ties and/or former employment with the U.S. As the de facto governing power, the Taliban oversee the regional hospitals and do not believe women and children who are raped deserve medical care. Families who report and try to seek justice for their assaulted family members are often threatened, imprisoned and murdered.

Our Culture is Giving’s network and volunteer doctors provide critical care after an assault and work to secure long-term supports, such as housing, food, clothing, education, medical care, personal care needs, and more. (All services are provided for free.)

A Note About Helping the People Who Helped Us

The families Our Culture is Giving assist are primarily those with ties to the United States. These are people who have served and sacrificed for our nation.

Our Culture is Giving tries to honor our fallen American soldiers and fallen Afghan allies by keeping the promises the U.S. government has failed to honor. In addition to providing direct care, Our Culture is Giving works to raise awareness about the plight of our Afghan
allies.

Please keep our small organization in mind. We are not salaried. Every cent donated goes to provide needed care. Because everyone in Afghanistan lives with the threat of Taliban violence, Our Culture is Giving’s teammates in Afghanistan work in anonymity for their safety as well as that of their family, clients and medical patients. We cannot share the names of our team members or the many doctors, imams, elders and advocates who make our work possible.