Jeff Fahey
Jeff Fahey
Jeff Fahey is a longtime humanitarian advocate who has traveled, lived, and worked extensively throughout the developing world for over 40 years. While Mr. Fahey’s interests are worldwide in scope, for the last fifteen years he has focused particular attention on helping the people of Afghanistan and the Western Sahara.
In Afghanistan, Mr. Fahey has used his nearly four decades of experience with that country to help his partners and friends there plan and carry out numerous successful development projects. He helped found orphanages in Kabul and an agricultural development initiative for poor farmers in Wardak Province; helped start a sewing and training factory, Safi Industries, that now employs over 1400 war widows; worked closely with the Afghan Ministry of Culture, Youth and Information; and launched a training program for young Afghan filmmakers. Mr. Fahey’s efforts were also crucial to the continuation of U.S. Government support for the International School of Kabul and to the founding of the American University of Afghanistan. From 2005-2008, Mr. Fahey Served on the US-Afghan Women's Council with First Lady Laura Bush and Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky.
Mr. Fahey has also worked tirelessly to draw attention to the plight of the world’s 25.4 million refugees, focusing particularly on the fact that some eight million of those refugees are now the victims of forgotten or frozen crises, and have been “warehoused” around the world in places like Thailand and Algeria. His work has specifically addressed the subject of warehoused Sahrawi refugees in
Algeria. His advocacy recently helped convince the Moroccan and Algerian governments to allow those refugees significantly greater communications with and more frequent visits to their relatives in Morocco. In recognition of his efforts, in 2010 Mr. Fahey was designated as The Global Ambassador of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI). In that capacity, Mr. Fahey has worked to help respond to the needs of the more than five million refugees displaced by the civil war in Syria and now living along that country's borders with Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon. Mr. Fahey visited the border area in early 2012, and was one of the first prominent international advocates to call attention to the emerging refugee crisis in that region. Following his visit, Mr. Fahey went directly to Washington to meet with members of the House and Senate to brief them on the urgency of the situation and the need for an immediate, effective response.
Mr. Fahey is a member of the Advisory Board of Friends Forever USA, a grassroots organization that promotes peace by cross-community youth work, connecting communities in the U.S. with teens from regions of conflict, primarily Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine. Friends Forever USA also runs a domestic conflict resolution program that works with African teen immigrants in New Hampshire. He also serves on the Board of Advisors of America Abroad Media, a U.S. NGO that works to empower and support local voices that convey universal values through creative content and media programming.
In all his work, Mr. Fahey has been a consistent and serious voice for those who have no voice, an advocate for those who have been forgotten, and a vigorous crusader against injustice.
When not in the field, Mr. Fahey pursues another successful career as an actor and producer of theater, television, and film. He is a veteran of more than 160 films and a number of television series.
In 2018 Mr. Fahey joined the Advisory Board of DevTech Systems, Inc. In this capacity, he is helping DevTech mobilize its world-class expertise in data visualization, knowledge management, and monitoring and evaluation to respond to the educational needs of refugees and displaced persons and to help emerging, non-traditional donor nations oversee and track their assistance programs.