Returning Dignity to the Dispossessed

Take a few moments and imagine picking up and leaving your house – right now – and having no tools to rebuild your life.

I’ve met dozens of refugees and displaced people over the last couple of weeks in Eastern Chad who have faced this reality. Some have been at it for seven years. Their position leaves them perpetually vulnerable.

They’re in a country where:

• 4 out of 5 people live off the land to farm or raise livestock
• 62% of people are in extreme poverty, making less than $1.25 a day
• Only one in four people in can read and write

And for the people I’ve met, it’s worse. My organization estimates that almost zero percent of women and 12% of men can read and write. And nearly all of them need land to make an income.

The war in Darfur, Sudan, and the associated war in Chad, does not seem to be ending soon. What that means is that these 500,000 refugees or displaced people in Chad are unlikely to own land anytime soon.

They are people like Hadidja, a 37-year-old divorced mother of three children. When she fled Sudan, her home and village were burning. Much of her family had been killed. She truly had nothing.

Humanitarian organizations want to – and need to – do more than give out food. And thankfully, we’re seeing that we can come alongside Hadidja and so many others with some innovative solutions.

For example, World Concern - a proud partner of One Day's Wages - has seen success in the following areas that are more than about hand-outs:

• Empowering refugees and displaced people to start small businesses. For example, if they were tailors before, they would get a grant for a sewing machine
• Working with local landowners to rent or offer surplus land to refugees for farming
• Putting people to work doing community service projects, then giving them an opportunity to buy what they need in a market

Hadidja was able to buy food, spices and clothes this week for her family, after working for it doing community service, called Cash for Work. For Hadidja, these are critical supplies, for someone who has next to nothing.

Hadidja was proud to be able to work, to do something to provide for her family. She says that perhaps the best thing she received from her time working, after losing everything, was a taste of dignity.

Derek Sciba - a member of One Day's Wages - works for World Concern, a Christian humanitarian organization and proud partner of ODW.
 

Photo Credit & Context: Derek Sciba | [Top]  Women in brightly colored clothes being empowered and working to help arrange rocks to direct rain water and improve the soil. [Bottom] Kids at the Sanour IDP (Internally Displaced People) site use old dinner plates or lids or just about anything to create their own toys.