ORCD — the Organisation for Relief, Community and Development — was not founded by outsiders. It was founded in 2012 by Afghans who understood, from lived experience, that lasting change in Afghanistan requires local knowledge, community trust, and Afghan leadership. That founding principle has shaped every decision made in the fourteen years since.
Today, ORCD operates across all 34 provinces of Afghanistan with a team of 1,800 staff, has delivered over $100 million in humanitarian and development programmes, and holds a distinction no other Afghan NGO has achieved: UN ECOSOC Special Consultative Status, awarded by the United Nations in 2015 in recognition of ORCD’s credibility and contribution to international development.
Why Being Afghan-Led Matters
Afghanistan is not a country where outsiders can simply arrive, establish operations, and expect communities to open their doors. Decades of conflict have built deep and justified distrust of external actors. Communities that have been failed, exploited, or abandoned by successive waves of foreign intervention are not quick to trust again.
ORCD’s teams are not outsiders. They are Afghans — from the provinces they serve, speaking the languages and dialects of the communities they work alongside, navigating the complex social and tribal dynamics that determine whether a programme succeeds or fails. That is not something that can be replicated by an international NGO, regardless of budget or intent.
The result is access. Access to communities in remote mountain districts where international organisations cannot operate. Access to women and girls in an environment where strict cultural norms govern interaction with outsiders. Access to conflict-affected areas where community relationships are the only safe passage.
A Track Record Built Over Fourteen Years
Since 2012, ORCD has not paused. Through political transitions, conflict escalations, the events of August 2021, economic collapse, and the ongoing humanitarian crisis that has left more than 15 million Afghans facing acute food insecurity, ORCD’s teams have remained on the ground, operational, and delivering.
That continuity matters. It is the difference between an organisation that responds to a crisis and one that never left. When the earthquakes struck Herat in October 2023 — among the deadliest in Afghanistan’s recorded history — ORCD’s teams were already in the province. They did not need days to mobilise. They were there.
Over 116 active projects are running across six programme areas: health and nutrition, food security, women’s empowerment and protection, orphan and child welfare, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), and emergency response. Each project is implemented under agreements with international partners — including UNICEF, the World Food Programme, WHO, UNFPA, UNHCR, UN Women, and UNOCHA — whose rigorous due diligence processes ORCD has passed repeatedly.
ORCD UK: Bringing Afghan Expertise to British Donors
ORCD UK is the United Kingdom registered entity established to mobilise British public support — and British Muslim giving in particular — for ORCD’s work in Afghanistan. The UK’s Muslim community has a long history of generous giving to Afghanistan. ORCD UK exists to ensure that giving reaches an organisation with the credentials, the access, and the accountability to put it to genuine use.
All funds raised by ORCD UK are deployed to ORCD Global under signed grant agreements with full reporting conditions. Restricted funds — Zakat, Sadaqah Jariyah, Qurbani — are held in separate designated accounts and used only for their permitted purposes. ORCD UK conducts annual due diligence on ORCD Global, including financial review, governance assessment, and sanctions screening against OFSI, UN, and OFAC lists.
Afghanistan continues to face one of the world’s most severe and underreported humanitarian crises. The need is not diminishing. What has changed is the availability of a UK-based channel to an organisation that has been delivering on the ground, for Afghans, for over a decade.