About The Program:

The College Preparation Program provides disadvantaged students from African immigrant and low-income families with SAT tutoring and practice tests that would otherwise be unaffordable. Better preparation leads to higher SAT scoring which better secures their access to desired colleges and future career opportunities.

The Need:

For those who have immigrated to the US from Africa, there are different challenges that young people face in preparation for college testing. The SAT test score is a key factor for most students applying to colleges. SAT tutoring and practice tests are essential for higher SAT scoring, but are expensive. Students from these low-income homes or immigrant families typically have the disadvantages of inadequate education and suffer language barriers that hinder learning and comprehension. Most have minimal or no access to SAT tutoring and college preparation due to the high cost of these specialized classes. Without these preparatory testing classes, it is unlikely they will have the same opportunity for higher education options.

How We Can Make This Happen:

A solid SAT score is vital to college entry. For most, a college degree is necessary to even be considered for a job. We provide students from immigrant family’s equal opportunity to SAT tutoring and practice test classes. Specialized classes help students develop a deeper understanding of problem-solving, critical thinking, reading, vocabulary, writing structure and time management. By supporting this program, donating your time or volunteering as a tutor, you can help us give these students the opportunity for the bright future they deserve.

About The Program:

The Ecological Restoration Program was designed to work in tandem with the 7,000 Safe Stoves for Darfur Refugee Mothers Program. Darfur Women Network provides three trees to each family who receives a Safe Stove through our 7,000 Safe Stoves Program. Encouraging ecological restoration not only creates a thriving ecosystem, but also enhances agricultural stability and healthier livestock.

The Challenge:

The biggest ecological challenge in Chad and surrounding regions is desertification. What is desertification and what causes it? Desertification is a type of land degradation in which an already dry land region becomes even increasingly arid, typically losing bodies of water as well as vegetation and wildlife. It is caused by a variety of factors, such as climate change and human activities. In addition to the extreme heat and high winds in the stifling desert of Chad, high firewood consumption has led to rapid deforestation in the area immediately in and surrounding the camp. The constant drain has an impact on the agriculture, scarcity of local building materials, shelter and pasture for livestock.

How We Can Make This Happen:

Firewood is a primary resource in Darfur refugee camps for cooking, building and cleaning. Darfur Women Network developed a more efficient stove locally referred to as a ‘Mud Stove’ which requires less firewood and can be crafted within the camps by refugee women using local materials. By supporting our Safe Stoves program, you’re not only providing refugee mothers with income generating opportunities, safer and more efficient cooking options, but also helping the ecological restoration in Chad. Because, we believe a healthy ecosystem and that we hold the responsibility of caring for our beautiful planet, DWN has also launched additional campaigns to plant 1,000 trees inside and around the camp to decrease ecological depletion.

About The Program:

The Soap Making Program focuses on providing 10 groups of refugee women with training, ingredients and tools to produce body and laundry soap to sell to over 29,000 refugees from Darfur for an affordable price.The Soapmaking Program teaches women about hygiene education and provides an income generating opportunity that encourages financial stability, thus empowering women. In addition to personal empowerment, this program has a vastly positive impact on the community. It helps reduce illness, improve overall health and well-being of the refugees in the camp. Working together through this program encourages team building and community.

The Need:

Many refugees displaced by the Darfur Conflict do not have regular access to personal hygiene items. The United Nations ceased the distribution of soap and many refugees are unaware of hygiene education. This lack of basic necessity results in ongoing disease, unsanitary conditions, overall poor health and malnutrition among the children in the camp. In addition to unsanitary conditions, many refugee women have no source of income; meaning they cannot provide for themselves or their families effectively.

How We Can Make This Happen:

By supporting this project, you will help us provide the training, ingredients and tools needed to help groups of women within the refugee camp to produce body and laundry soap to be used as an income generating opportunity. By producing soap within the camp, we can help decrease the risk of diseases, provide and highlight the importance of personal hygiene. This program is sustainable and locally run by refugees in the camp.

The Challenge:

Fitness and nutrition is very important for all ages in African immigrant communities; particularly for women and girls. However, lack of education regarding nutrition and healthy cooking, better eating habits and a more active lifestyle leads to unhealthy lifestyles in immigrants. Fitness has not been traditionally recognized as it has not been a part of their regular routine, education or background in Africa. Most of the immigrants come from many countries that have no gyms, fitness classes or running tracks.

In the US, food awareness, healthy eating and fitness are commonly promoted by the American Medical Association to reduce obesity, risk of disease and encourage overall healthier lifestyle. However, immigrant women and girls still face challenges that hinder them from participating in healthier lifestyle options. These challenges include:

• Culture and religion that prohibits females from fitness centers or classes where there is a male presence.
• Lack of financial means to join a gym or specialized fitness classes.
• Lack of financial means to pay for daycare services.
• Lack of financial means for or access to fresh, organic food, joining nutrition education and healthy cooking classes.

How We Can Make This Happen:

The Fitness and Nutrition Program focuses on education as the most effective tool to advance knowledge, raise awareness and enhance techniques about health and fitness as well as tips about smart shopping to reduce the food cost that challenges many low-income families. This program provides lectures about nutritious food and training for immigrant mothers in the form of cooking classes that demonstrate how to prepare everyday balanced meals and nutritious snacks.

About The Program:

7,000 Safe Stoves for Darfur Refugee Mothers provides 7,000 Darfuri refugee families with a safe and efficient way to prepare meals using the Mud Stove, created and implemented by Darfur Women Network. Safe Stoves positively impacts survivors of genocide in Darfur refugee camps. Providing these stoves for refugees reduces health and safety risks as well as encourages ecological preservation.

During her visit to Chad, Executive Director of Darfur Women Network, Mastora Bakhiet, led a field study to the Touloum Camp to determine an alternative, more affordable stove for refugees. During this study, Bakhiet and her team created, the Mud Stove (a fuel-efficient stove clay stove) as the most practical, fuel efficient, inexpensive, safe and adaptable one. Refugee mothers quickly preferred this stove as the best option. The Mud Stove could be easily crafted onsite with locally available materials, generate income within the camp and reduce firewood collection significantly. Under direction of Darfur Women Network, Mud Stove production quickly began. From August 2014 to the present, Darfur Women Network has successfully and efficiently distributed over 400 safe stoves to the poorest mothers among the refugees.

After DWN reaches the goal to provide each family in the Touloum camp with a Safe Stove, this program model will be replicated and used in the remaining 11 refugee camps in the region.

The Need:

This Safe Stove Project targets 7,000 families who are living in Touloum Darfur refugee camp in Chad. These men, women and children have been living in this camp for more than decade. The refugees have no consistent source of income, children suffering malnutrition, water shortage and trauma due to the genocide that forced them to flee their own villages to survive.

Traditional cooking methods require firewood requiring women and girls to walk several miles into the forest which are known to be dangerous attack zones. This is their only source for retrieving firewood. Leaving the camp early in the morning, they must “walk many miles (often a 17 hour walk) into the desert near border to Sudan,” according to a Darfur Women Network representative in the camp. This daily trip is not only a physical burden, but it also puts them in great danger. “Spending up to four days per week collecting firewood outside the camps exposes them to the risk of sexual attacks and rape from local militia and men residing near the camps,” according to a report by the United Nations Humans Rights Council. The wood they collect in the forest is either used in food preparation or resold to help support their families. This journey is extremely dangerous and the women and girls are exposed to assault, abduction, exploitation, rape and even death.

Employing alternate methods of cooking will not completely eliminate the need for firewood as it is still a primary source of desperately needed income. However, adapting a safe fuel-efficient stove will reduce the length of time required to collect firewood, the number of trips into the forest lessening risk of attack, protect refugees from smoke inhalation and open fire threats as well preserve the forest from desertification.

How We Can Make This Happen:

By supporting 7,000 Safe Stoves for Darfur Refugee Mothers, you can make a difference in the safety, health, community and well-being of refugee families living in the refugee camps in and around Chad. Additionally, each family who receives a Safe Stove will also receive 3 trees to plant in or around their camp, shelter or farm area.

In addition to health, safety and ecological preservation, Darfur Women Network believes education and team-building within the communities will help generate long-term stability for individuals and families. Refugees will have insight to determine the needs of their communities, work together and ensure long term sustainable management of natural resources both in the camps and when they return home to Darfur. Income generating skill sets lead to self-reliance, community participation, and leadership development as well as transformation and decision making.

About The Program:

Safety is the utmost concern of Darfur Women Network. Communication is key in the refugee camps, villages and those who are enroute for firewood in Chad and surrounding villages. Since many areas are still high conflict zones and firewood treks for women and girls last from sunrise to sunset, having access to danger alerts is imperative. Providing villages and camps with walkie talkies or cell phones enables Safety Groups, guards or individuals to communicate attack alerts, the arrival of new supplies or medical aid, information regarding food, water or medical shortages or emergencies. Cell phones and walkie talkies also provide villages and camps with a means to communicate event gatherings and vital community information. Some areas do not have cell phone coverage, so walkie talkies are the only means of communication. Areas with cell phone coverage can benefit from the use of smart phones so that educational information, text and media files, field data gathering and monitoring can be documented and relayed to and from the field staff as well as staff in the US.

How The Program Works:

Used Cell Phones & Smartphones:

There are 12 total camps in Chad. Each camp consists of roughly 13,000 and 29,000 refugees per camp. Our goal is to provide at least 5 basic cell phones per camp for communication and safety information and at least 3 smart phones per camp for educational resources for adult and youth programs. The individuals in these camps have been isolated from accessing educational and informational outlets. They have been completely disconnected with the outside world. We at Darfur Women Network believe that providing them with the tools to learn, communicate and connect is important to educational and social development both individually and in rebuilding their communities. Because we are committed to progress in the camps and villages, it is imperative that our field staff have the tools to collect data, monitor and communicate regularly on the status of each program.

Walkie Talkies:

Additionally, surrounding villages outside the camps do not have cell phone coverage, our goal is to provide each of the 35 villages with a walkie-talkie, so that they may communicate both with the smaller villages and the camps. Walkie-talkies have a range of 25-30 miles which would be very useful for those who are on foot to communicate with those in the camps.

How We Can Make This Happen:

In addition to the actual cell phones and walkie-talkies, other items are necessary in order for this to work. Since walkie-talkies operate differently from cell phones, solar chargers are necessary in order to keep them operational. Cell phones require SIM cards, cables and chargers.

There are many locations across the US that receive hundreds of used phones per day for recycling or trash. With the constant upgrade in technology, many people toss them out or even have older phones stored away in boxes that sit completely unused. Rather than drop them off for recycling or store them away, why not donate them to people that can truly use them. Don’t have a phone to donate, but want to help?

• Have a collection drive at your school, university, club, community center, group or religious organization.
• Purchase a used walkie-talkie or used cell phone from discount retailers to donate.
• Contact cell phone providers or carriers about used phones on their way to the recycling facility.
• Ask local businesses in your community if they’d be willing to chip in or organize an event.