AUBURN – In Afghanistan, Guljan owns a company that grows fruits and vegetables and turns them into paste, chutney and other products. It’s a good, strong business with 250 workers and gross revenues last year of $50,000.

Guljan built the company – Afghan Women Agriculture Association – and has been running it successfully for seven years, but she didn’t know how to control the quality of her food from batch to batch.

On Thursday she learned from an Auburn company.

“Even the smallest company here isn’t comparable to what we have in Afghanistan,” she said through a translator. “It’s very advanced for us.”

For two days this week, Guljan and three other Afghan food industry businesswomen toured World Harbors, an Auburn-based gourmet sauce and marinade company, to see how an American business handles everything from hygiene to marketing.

It was one of six stops the women made to Maine food companies as part of the Business Council for Peace, or Bpeace, a nonprofit organization that mentors businesswomen in Afghanistan and Rwanda. Bpeace’s goal: help female entrepreneurs grow their business and create jobs, increasing peaceful opportunities in war-ravaged communities.

“The ripple is gigantic. The ripple from this visit to Maine will be huge,” said Laurie Chock, a Bpeace board member.

A total of 12 Afghan women are in the United States through Bpeace, touring companies similar to their own, including radio stations, furniture makers and sports equipment manufacturers. Four came to Maine, drawn by a Bpeace volunteer who thought they’d find kinship among the state’s small food-business owners.

On Wednesday and Thursday the women – Guljan, the fruit and vegetable processor; Habiba, an herb and vegetable processor; Mariam, a dried fruit producer; and Zainul, a beekeeper – spent time at World Harbors. They toured the facility, met with company leaders and worked hands-on in production.

They learned that some business concepts were universal: safe food handling, quality standards, marketing and dealing with limited resources.

“Start small and pick a few things to think about. It can be overwhelming. We didn’t go from a small company to this overnight,” said Kathy Malone, the quality assurance manager for World Harbors. Malone wrote “refractometer,” “pH meter” and “quaternary ammonia” in English on a conference room white board while the women jotted it down in Dari, an official language of Afghanistan.

The women will tour Stonewall Kitchen in York on Friday before heading to New York to regroup with the other eight women here from Bpeace. They will spend the next few days planning ways to use what they’ve learned in Maine.

Zainul, the beekeeper, already had plans.

She started keeping bees in 1995 during the rule of her country by the Taliban, Islamic extremists who outlawed the education of women and girls. Zainul was secretly teaching girls when a friend gave her two beehives to help her support herself.

She now has 100 hives and an association of 80 female beekeepers. In Maine, she learned she could turn her honey into creams and soaps, products she hadn’t even considered.

“Having Bpeace on my side, I feel safe,” she said through a translator. “And I learn more every day.”