HOUSTON-In celebration of Women’s Month, Houston Community College Southwest recently sponsored an address on the Women of Afghanistan by writer/photographer Peggy Kelsey.

Kelsey’s program centered around 40 Afghan women she met and photographed during a visit to Afghanistan last year. The beginning of her Afghan Women’s Project, the photos and life stories of the women will be part of a book she is currently writing entitled Solah: The Stories of Afghan Women During and After the Taliban.

The Kent State University graduate first passed through Afghanistan on her way home from her junior year abroad, which she spent at Pahlavi University in Shiraz, Iran. In 1980, after three years of traveling and working around the world, she and her husband moved to Texas and built a home in Webberville, outside of Austin to raise a family.

During the 90s Kelsey studied photography at a local community college and her husband took flying lessons and became a licensed pilot, eventually becoming a pilot for Airserv, a company that provides air transport for disaster relief and post-war reconstruction workers. Seemingly unconnected at the time, those two events became the catalyst for her Afghan Women’s Project.

Her passionate involvement in women’s issues kept her interest in the women of Afghanistan alive and in 2002, when she was invited to meet with a delegation of 14 women who passed through Austin, the project was conceived.

“I was amazed at how strong and full of life some of these women were in spite of all the difficulties they’d been through,” she said. “Talking with them about their lives moved me to begin the Afghan Women’s Project.”

“With Airserv’s support, I went to Afghanistan for six weeks in August and September last year,” she added, “and returned with portraits and stories of 40 Afghan women.”

She is now sharing those stories with audiences around the nation.