canada afghanistan mission

Casting director Rhonda Fisekci is holding an open casting call for 18 to 60 year-old members of the Afghan, Muslim and Amputee communities interested in participating as civilian role players to enact a variety of different village scenarios during various military training sessions in Alberta this fall from August 21 – November 1, 2010.

The Casting Call will be held in Vancouver on August 4 & 5, 2010 at the Holiday Inn, Metrotown, 4405 Central Blvd. Burnaby BC. The casting will run from 2:00pm – 9:00pm.

The roles for both men and women will include village leaders, religious leaders, interpreters and police chiefs in addition to various other community members to populate the “virtual village”. Training will be provided for all participants. The daily rate of pay will be between $195.00 and $290.00 per day, including days off and training days.

Travel from Edmonton & Calgary, meals and accommodation will be provided. A $150.00, return travel allowance will be given to participants from outside of Alberta. These are peacekeeping exercises between civilians and military personnel. No weapons or live fire will be used.

For the Amputee Role Players: Can be of any ethnicity as we will provide the necessary hair, make-up and wardrobe to make you look Afghan. The production does hold what we call “Heavy Casualty Days”. By using special effects make-up etc we are able to re-create a very real aftermath of a bombing which the soldiers come in to deal with. We ask that the applicants not be faint of heart as these scenarios can be very intense and dramatic. Our Amputee participants will be a very important element on these particular training days.

In its commitment to provide military support to stabilize Afghanistan, the Canadian government has engaged the film industry to re-create Afghan villages in Wainwright. By having the motion picture industry re-create dramatic village settings with real civilian and real dramatic situations, military recruits will come to understand cultural, religious and political issues that will help them assist the Afghan people on their own terms. U.S. and British training forces estimate that after recruits have participated in three of these training sessions before traveling to Afghanistan, the casualty rate, civilian and military, dropped from 50 to 4 percent.

* All participants, male and female, must be between 18 and 60 years-old of Afghan or Muslim descent. Farsi, Dari and Pashto speakers are definitely needed.
* All Amputee participants must be between 18 and 60 years-old and can be of any ethnicity as we will provide the necessary hair, make-up and wardrobe to make you look Afghan.
* Separate accommodation is provided for the women.
* Meals and accommodation will be provided by the production.
* Travel is provide from Edmonton and Calgary to the military base
* $150.00 return travel allowance is provided to participants coming in from outside of Alberta
* All participants must complete and pass a security clearance.
* Paid training will be provided.
* Our next sessions are: August 21 – 29, 2010

Sept 13 – Oct 4, 2010

Sept 23 – 30, 2010

Oct 25 – Nov 1, 2010

* The daily rate of pay will be between $195.00 - $290.00 per day – including days off and training days.
* These are peacekeeping type exercises between civilians and military.
* No weapons or live fire will be used.
* All interested participants should bring their BC Care Card, Drivers License, Social Insurance Number and addresses of their place of residence for the past 5 years.
* ALL APPLICANTS MUST HAVE LIVED IN CANADA FOR A MINIMUM OF 5 YEARS.
* NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED.

Casting Call

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Thursday, August 5, 2010

2:00pm – 9:00pm each day

Holiday Inn, Metrotown,

4405 Central Blvd.,Burnaby BC.

For further information, contact Rhonda Fisekci at email rfisekci@canadafilm.com

A 13-year old young lady from Vancouver has helped raise $300,000 so that girls can go to school in Afghanistan. This is simply incredible.

Well done, Alaina Podmorow. You've done more for women's education and civil rights in a few years than most people will achieve in a lifetime.

This is what can be achieved when ordinary people do extraordinary things. Our government ought to be taking notes, here:

When Alaina Podmorow was a shy nine-year-old, her mother asked if she'd like to go with her to a speech about how girls and women were treated in Afghanistan.

"At the time I thought, 'I'm not quite sure what this is about but I get to stay up late so I think I'll go to it,'" she says.

Four years later, having raised nearly $300,000 to help girls go to school in Afghanistan, she recalls eight words from that speech that she says she'll never forget: "The worst thing you can do is nothing."

The inspirational speech was given by Sally Armstrong, a Toronto-based author and human-rights champion who has chronicled the abuse of women under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and their struggle now for equality.

Poised and confident, Podmorow, 13, now gives inspirational speeches herself as the founder of the non-profit Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan, a fundraising organization that channels money for teachers' salaries and training through Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan.

"I found that it doesn't matter how little or young you are, you can make this difference," she said in an interview during a conference on Afghanistan hosted by the Canadian Federation of University Women.

We've been hearing some very encouraging things over the last while from honorable MPs like Bob Rae and other politicians in the Conservative minority government and even in the NDP about a continued role for Canada in Afghanistan post-2011. Yet those nice words have not yet evolved into a really comprehensive public discussion. In the absence of talk and planning, the action we're seeing is basically preparation for withdrawal.

From MarkOttawa:

A series of ceremonial handovers is bound to take place between Canadian and American commanders between now and next Canada Day. They will mark the close of an unlikely chapter in Canadian military history — an unexpected combat deployment that was initiated with almost no public discussion by the Chrétien and Martin governments that is now ending with the first withdrawal of Canadian combat forces before the war they were fighting has concluded.

Just as the war ramps up this year with a surge of U.S. troops, Canada’s military footprint has already begun shrinking.

Where until recently Canadian troops were stretched across a territory the size of New Brunswick, they are now mostly squeezed into an area the size of Ottawa.

Canada remains responsible to NATO for all of Kandahar, but most of Canada’s combat forces are now in Panjwaii District, to the west of Kandahar City. A couple of hundred Canadian soldiers still remain in the provincial capital, which is to come under U.S. command by early fall [emphasis added]. Another handful of Canadian troops are scattered across Spin Boldak near the Pakistan border and in Arghandab and Dand districts…

A logistics colonel, who is to be promoted to brigadier-general next year, has already been chosen to lead the closeout mission. His troops are to be protected by soldiers from the Alberta-based Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry [that will be Task Force 1-11, 3 PPCLI--not a battle group as with previous rotos].

Detailed inventories of what is where at Kandahar Airfield and at forward operating bases and strongpoints have begun to be compiled. More than 1,000 vehicles must be retrieved as well as thousands of weapons, pallets of ammunition, office and communications equipment and temporary accommodations.

Once this mountain of gear is at the airfield, several months will be spent cleaning and re-organizing it for the return to Canada.

One of the most under-reported Canadian projects in Afghanistan will be helping to provide benefits for a huge number of locals. This is the Dahla Dam project, already providing much-needed water to long-parched lands. In the Globe and Mail:

It appears the money and years of hard work are finally starting to bear fruit, quite literally.

For the first time in decades, the Dahla Dam is channelling badly needed water into the Arghandab district's once-parched fields. During a recent flyover of the dam and its surrounding environs, lush green orchards resembling those in the Okanagan Valley could be seen for miles.

“To see the amount of green that's there now and further inland is really encouraging,” federal International Development Minister Bev Oda said at the time.

“When you can visually see progress, it's very rewarding and I think Canadians will have a very good news story when we complete the work that we're doing.”

The Dahla Dam is the largest dam in Kandahar province and the second largest in Afghanistan. The dam, 34 kilometres north of Kandahar city, was first built in the 1950s.

But three decades of war have taken their toll.

“Afghanistan has gone through 30 years of warfare, and there's been significant degradation in the downstream systems that results in 70 per cent of the water from the reservoir being wasted,” Rowswell said.

Once finished, the project is expected to double the amount of irrigated land in the Arghandab River basin — a godsend in a country where food is often in short supply.

Students in the second round of photography classes funded by the Canadian Embassy in Kabul graduated on June 8. Canadian Ambassador William Crosbie welcomed the students who were among the first visitors to the new embassy building.

Hello CASC Members

"We have an obligation to see this thing through," Rae said. "The door is open to serious discussion in Canada — and between Canada and NATO — about what the future looks like."

There is now an opportunity for a full parliamentary debate in both chambers — not a narrow partisan debate, but a broad, multi-partisan, national interest debate — where proposals for the mix of forces and civilians deployed to Afghanistan can be openly and frankly discussed.

While many Canadians will welcome the end of our primary fighting role, there’s solid support for providing expertise and aid to help Afghans rebuild after decades of misrule, invasion and civil war. If we can train troops and police without being directly embroiled in combat, that too is worth considering.