About Our Work

Prior to the Afghan evacuation date of August 2021, Leslie Merriman was a volunteer with the local chapter of No One Left Behind for several years. In this role, she established her own pipeline of volunteers and donors and helped welcome and settle hundreds of families in the DC metro area. 

When the evacuation efforts began, Leslie reached out to Afghan families to see if there was any help or information she could provide and when the situation became all the more volatile, Leslie reached back to resources in the Afghan volunteer community to help coordinate evacuation efforts. 

From home in Virginia, Leslie connected to other former No One Left Behind volunteers and joined new evacuation efforts with Task Force Pineapple, Operation North Star and some other efforts done via smaller teams of people. 

After the withdrawal, Leslie had the opportunity to merge resources with an existing, established Afghan based non profit. This merging allowed work to continue with a far greater scope and reach across Afghanistan as a whole. 

Since October 2021, Leslie and her team based in Afghanistan and the UK have helped keep hundreds of US allies safe, warm, fed, and coordinated free medical care across Afghanistan, serving thousands of women and children. Additionally, the Our Culture is Giving team, OCIG, has provided critical supplies to multiple hospitals. Over these years, OCIG has fed hundreds of children with food drop offs at schools and door to door food drop offs. 

Over these years, there was one critical issue that Leslie and her team saw. The sexual assault of women and children at the hands of the Taliban. Now with no one to keep the Taliban in check, they abuse their power and hurt the most vulnerable, especially those with US ties and former employment. 

The Taliban, as the de facto governing power, oversee the regional hospitals. The Taliban does not believe women and children who they rape deserve medical care and they deny care almost universally. Beyond that, families who report and try to seek justice are often threatened by the Taliban and worse, imprisoned and murdered. 

We stepped in with our large network of volunteer doctors to try to fill this void. We coordinate with local tribal elders and Imams to identify those who need critical care after an assault. 

We provide that care for those with no options. We also provide first trimester medical abortions for those who were impregnated from the assault. 

For each case we take in, we assess their overall health, run labs and diagnostics, provide medication, follow up care, if needed, an abortion, if needed, a safe house as well. We also provide food, all at no cost. 

Some of those who have come into our care stay long term. We care for several families and provide them housing, food, clothing, education, medical care, personal care needs, and more. We provide this to them at no cost. 

The families we care for and assist are one with ties to the US. These are families who have paid the ultimate price and made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, the US and in turn, the US has offered nothing. 

We try to honor our fallen US soldiers, and their fallen Afghan allies by keeping the promises the US has failed to honor. 

We desperately need help with awareness and donations. Please keep our small organization in mind. We are not salaried. Every cent donated goes 100% to care and not admin fees. 

Please note, security for the OCIG team in Afghanistan is paramount. The team works in anonymity for their and their family's safety. We cannot share the names of our team members, our many doctors, Imams and elders who make this work happen.