Sultana Fund’s Story

Our story starts with me, Sultana Amani, the founder and current director of Sultana Fund. Several key experiences I had a teenager living in Kabul shaped Sultana Fund’s NGO story:  learning English, an entrepreneurship opportunity, working for an NGO in Afghanistan, and the Taliban takeover in August 15 2021.

As a young girl living in Kabul I attended after-school English classes taught by Afghan teachers. These wonderful young teachers were funded through a grant from the Blossom Hills Foundation, headquartered in Connecticut in the United States.  Although initially I nearly failed, I was given a second chance. English later opened many doors.I started university quite young in Kabul. There I was introduced to entrepreneurship competition as part of the university’s entrepreneurship and innovation program. Imagine a young Afghan girl age 17, the only female in a group of Afghan male students, bringing up the idea of a social business concept that raised awareness of period poverty -  the inability to afford menstrual products or access water and sanitation facilities, making them miss school, work, and negatively impacting their health (UN Women, see 

https://www.unwomen.org/en/articles/explainer/period-poverty-why-millions-of-girls-and-women-cannot-afford-their-periods. Yet I succeeded to overcome my group members’ initial deep embarrassment and incredulity, and the concept of a reusable menstrual pad was introduced. Our submission won first place. I named the concept “Blossom Pads”, honoring my earlier English program.

My English skills enabled me to work full-time even as a teen-ager with an American-funded health program while attending university in the evenings.  I learned key project management concepts as a monitoring and evaluation officer with the Afghan Social Marketing Organization (ASMO), the local partner formed by Abt Associates for the multi-million dollar USAID-funded Sustaining Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) Plus project. With my wages along with contributions from my family I further developed Blossom Pads in my spare time. It was hard work to create and test the design with women and girls, identify a supply chain for materials, and create a workforce of women with the skills and machinery for production. With friends I explored marketing with shops and NGOs. Initial testing proved successful and I began negotiating a large contract with UNICEF. It was then that the Taliban entered Kabul. In an instant my dreams of education and Blossom Pads crashed.In August 2021 with 20 minutes’ notice my family of 7 were airlifted from Kabul, landing in a U.S. Army base in Wisconsin with just our backpacks. We started life anew in Maryland as asylum seekers. At age 19 I started working the 3 am shift in a neighborhood bakery, and later resumed my university education with a scholarship at American University, Washington DC.Life was very hard for all of us as we tackled living in a new culture and permanent residency but I could not forget the trained women in Kabul with their sewing machines and patterns expecting paid work and the needs of women and girls for a proven cost-effective and environmentally friendly period product. I remembered Blossom Hills Foundation that funded the English program I attended as a young girl and read about their competitive grant program. Even though I was competing against American graduate students and global concepts, I decided to apply for a grant in fall 2021 soon after arriving in Maryland. Blossom Hill Foundation shared my enthusiastic vision.  I was thrilled to receive my first grant in 2022. It is now the fourth year of successful annual grants, personal contributions and fundraising, and effective grant management. Blossom Pads continues to create an income stream for many home-bound women in poverty while helping women and girls combat period poverty.