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A local nonprofit organization that was organized following the 9/11 terrorists attacks in the U.S. will soon open a medical clinic it built and is now equipping in the western Afghanistan city of Hewat.

Realtor Cindy Duffy of the Pleasanton office of Prudential California Realty off Owens Drive near Hopyard Road is chief fundraiser for the World Transformation Center (WTC), where she is also a board member. The organization was founded in 2002 by Kathy Ollerton Krafchow. Her husband Ed Krafchow owns Prudential California Realty, which has three offices in Pleasanton, and is the firm's chief executive officer.

WTC, which has no affiliation with the real estate firm, nevertheless has a number of Prudential agents involved as volunteers, including Duffy. The group held a fundraiser last week and an unidentified Utah businessman donated the equipment and much of the medical supplies that will give the seven-room medical clinic an X-ray room, incubators, devices for sonograms, and fully equipped labor and delivery rooms, a first for Afghanistan. The organization is paying the $50,000 needed to ship the medical equipment and supplies to furnish the hospital clinic in Herat.

"As it is now," Duffy said, "families must travel long distances to the other side of the country for health care, an expensive trip that many can't afford and just don't make. The clinic the WTC has just built will give them complete care close to where they live."

Kathy Ollerton Krafchow is a recognized vision consultant to business organizations. She has conducted leadership seminars for the last 25 years and has worked with over 150,000 executives. Through her coaching and mentoring, she and those who work with her, including Duffy, have business and social contacts throughout the U.S., where much of the funding comes from for WTC's efforts.

It was during one of the coaching sessions that terrorists flew planes they had hijacked into the World Trade Center's twin towers, destroying them and killing more than 3,000.

"In searching for a way to help after the attack, Krafchow received an email from the principal of Liberty High School, which is near Ground Zero and whose students were terrified and emotionally distraught," Duffy said. "Krafchow's team of people took that challenge and traveled to Liberty High every month for 12 months to mentor and coach seniors at the school."

The result was the largest graduating class ever at Liberty, and the school's success is continuing.

Krafchow's organization also decided to extend its aid to Afghanistan. It sponsored trips by Afghani delegates to the U.S. to discuss writing a constitution.

Then, hearing their needs, it decided to build a girls' school, which opened two years ago. The mew school, Duffy said, now serves 25 villages with two sessions each day and an all-girl enrollment of more than 500. For the girls, it's their first time inside a school classroom, which was banned by the Taliban. The school sits on land donated by the family of Prudential Realtor Ibrahim Mojaddidi, who sells real estate on the Peninsula.

Besides Duffy and Mojaddidi, others on Krafchow's WTC board of directors include Realtors Beverly Herrera and Tiffiny Alexander of Pleasanton, Realtor Nina Jurjevic with Prudential's San Jose office, and Realtor Steve Smith, formerly a Prudential agent who is now with Keller Williams Realty in the Sacramento area.

Although the medical center and its first-through-sixth-grade school (which WTC will keep growing into a full elementary and high school) are the largest permanent projects by the World Transformation Center, the organization also pitched in after Hurricane Katrina to care for some of those displaced. It rented houses and apartments for families and even bought some of them cars for transportation to jobs. WTC team members dedicated their own time and resources to help in the disaster, an effort that lasted two years following the hurricane.

Kathy Ollerton Krafchow and Ibrahim Mojaddidi went to Herat to officially open the new Alfasani Public School that their organization built and equipped, turning it over to Afghanistan Ministry of Education. It was dedicated to the sister of the Liberty School principal in New York who died in the 9/11 attacks.

Anyone interested in helping the WTC in its fundraising efforts can contact Cindy Duffy at the Prudential Realty office at 5111 Johnson Court or send her an email at www.cindy.duffy@prurealty.com.

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