A tale of dreams deferred in war-torn Afghanistan

While Army Major Lorenzo Fiorentino was stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan, from March 2004 to March 2005, he noticed that the Afghan people could make just about anything. Within weeks, he organized a bazaar at his military base where local vendors could sell their wares, stimulating the economy and giving the soldiers an opportunity to buy gifts to mail home to loved ones. One day, one of his soldiers introduced him to a widow who pitched him on the idea of organizing fellow Afghan women to create and sell dolls representing the various tribes of Afghanistan. A museum board member, Fiorentino offered a stirring account of the initial success and ultimate demise of his economic development efforts at an April 27, 2019, AV presentation at the museum. On display during the event were artifacts from and maps of Afghanistan along with a colorful array of dolls.

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