A bakery in Lamontay

CWS and its partners support 12 agricultural cooperatives in Haiti. Those cooperatives have 5,753 members. Among those is cooperate KRCLJ in the town of Lamontay, which includes a number of members who sell bread for a living. With the help of CWS and partners, KRCLJ’s members were able to build a bakery in the community. Co-op members, other residents and students worked together to carry rocks, sand, straw and water across the mountains into their town.

On the day the bakery opened, there was celebration in Lamontay. Bread is a necessity for residents, and now it can be produced locally. “I dance, I am happy,” said Gelina Predenstin, one of the women who had previously baked bread in far away bakeries. She explained, “We used to leave at midnight, walking in the dark and danger, on narrow and bad roads, in rain and sun.” Alase Naissance added, “What we have built is something sustainable, that will be left behind for our children.”

Elizia Saintilus, another of the bakers who had previously traveled great distances only to wait in long lines to bake bread, said, “We spent three days away to bake bread. Now I dance, but we also worked hard to get this far.”

Finding Community

Berthe Mairounga greets everyone with a beaming smile, full of charisma, and asks warmly how you are doing.  Her English has come a long way from when she first arrived in the United States, September 21, 2010, and did not know how to say “hello.”  She is a refugee from Chad – a single mother raising six children without hands.  She was begging for money on the streets of Cameroon when she applied to be resettled in the United States.  Her immigration counselor asked her why she wanted to go to the U.S., and she told him, “I want to go to America; I want my children to go to school; I am asking for money in the streets to feed my children, and it’s no good for me.  It’s better in the U.S. –there are people there to help you.”  She had seen it on TV.

The gentleman behind the immigration desk told her life is hard in America, too.  Berthe responded, “I want to go.  If it’s too hard, I will come back to Cameroon, but I have to try.”  She doesn’t have fingers, and when she arrived in Durham nearly four years ago, she couldn’t move her right arm.

She said it was very difficult when she first arrived and remembers getting lost one night on the Durham bus system and not knowing any English to ask for help.  She also remembers her CWS case manager helping her, taking her to the social security office, the food stamps office and the bus station to get connected with her new community.  She talks about Mary, the CWS Durham Director, interpreting for her in French, and her church, which CWS helped connect with Berthe as a co-sponsor, and how much they supported her.

Now Berthe converses comfortably in English.  She has had ten surgeries and can move her arm, elbow, and wrist, and has some ability to grasp and hold things. She chats with her oldest son’s friends.  He will go to Chowan University in Toronto in the fall.  He graduated high school this year and is working at Chick-Fil-A.

One of her daughters comes home from driver’s ed class.  She hopes her daughter will go to college soon, as Berthe says her favorite thing about America is school.  She takes advantage of the opportunity for education by taking English classes four days per week.  She is also taking a citizenship class to prepare for her exam and says she can’t wait to be an American.

Berthe volunteers at her church, and hopes to join the choir one day.  She would like to write articles about children respecting elders, and she works on her English writing skills with this goal in mind.  She’s also entrepreneurial.  She went to 10,000 Villages in Chapel Hill to tell them about some African women’s clothing her mother is sending to see if they are interested in selling some.  She also speaks to the manager about volunteering at the store.  Berthe and the manager already know each other.

When she leaves, Berthe flashes a big smile, “I know everyone – I really am American.”  When asked if she ever thought about returning to Cameroon, Berthe said, “Never; America is the best place to live forever.”

Storyteller: Mandy Maring, United States

Poverty Turns to Abundance for a Family and a Village

Charles Kioko of Mwingi District of Kitui County in Eastern Kenya is a 38-year-old married man with 6 children. His family of eight has lived in poverty, existing on less than a dollar a day. Kioko laments how his children suffered malnutrition–because he didn’t know then what he now knows all too well.

In 2010, CWS began work with Kioko and 23 others in his community, first by supporting water activities. It was the beginning of a brighter future for Kioko, his family and his community because they now had access to the resources, information, knowledge and new skills they needed to improve their standard of living.

The people formed a working group to collect and contribute stones, sand, gravel and water for construction. They also provided unskilled labor. Little did they know that they were starting a journey that would change the lives of the entire community.

The team built four sand dams and two shallow wells. kioko donated his land, along the bank of a seasonal river, for the construction of one of the sand dams. Four years later the sand and stone filled dam stores a lot of water. After realizing that the available water exceeded demand and the river was flowing permanently, Kioko and the team started using drip irrigation to farm along the river in an environmentally friendly way.

Observing their dedication, CWS added value to the community initiatives by supporting training on conservation agriculture for the 23-member team and 10 others from the community. The training included instruction on the use of zai pits, which improve filtration of the captured runoff. The planting pits meet the criteria for three types of conservation practices: soil conservation, water conservation, and erosion protection.

For the very first time, Kioko’s crop yield from his three acres of land was 100 percent, providing him with enough fruits, vegetables, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, green grams and pigeon peas to feed his family nutritious meals and to sell as surplus .

He uses the money to pay for the children’s education and to buy medicine and clothing. Others in the community are almost at the same level. Kioko has more produce, as he is able to plant using both drip irrigation and zai pits, given that his farm is next to the sand dam.

In April, the community harvested 21 bags of green grams weighing 90kgs each. They sold these collectively for 283,500 Kenyan Shillings ($3,335). Kioko has offered to donate one acre of land to be used to train other people from the region on methods of dry farming and the use of drip irrigation.

The community related this sentiment to CWS staff on a visit last April:

“What else can we ask for? You took us from rags to riches. Our community has become a farm school. People come here to learn from us and we are very proud of the outcomes, especially when we hear that after the learning they go to their respective communities and practice what they have learned. Our farms are farm schools and learning centers.”

Storyteller: Charles Kioko, Kenya

Refugee Finds New Life in Pennsylvania

I came to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in March of 2012 with three other single men from the prison in Djibouti, Eritrea. I was 24 at the time. I knew no English but was eager to learn and begin my life anew.  I had escaped forced military conscription in my country twice by a dangerous border crossing.  I was captured and deported back to my country where I was imprisoned.  But I was accepted for resettlement into the United States and eventually got here to Harrisburg.  I began working long hours in a food processing plant and saved money in order to begin studying English at the university.

I know enough English now to attend a community college.  I study full time and work part time in order to pay tuition and my rent.  I am very involved in a local Eritrean church and lead Bible studies.  I would like to work as a pastor or perhaps teach school when I graduate.  I am grateful to all the people in this community who have helped me and who continue to be a friend to me.

The CWS staff helped me a lot in the beginning, and now I sometimes interpret for new Eritreans who come.  My life is very different now because in Eritrea life was very hard.  The government takes all the young men and puts them into military barracks and they are not able to work.  But now I can work and even send some money back to my family.

Storyteller: Zemichael Gebretadik , United States

We Finished Together

Nearly every day, new refugees from Iraq, Iran, Burma, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea come to Durham, North Carolina. Those of us who work in refugee resettlement, social services and our local public schools get to know these families, but for many in our community, refugees remain invisible. They live in different apartment complexes, shop in different stores and speak different languages.

One way that CWS tries to bridge the gap between refugees and long-time community members here in Durham is through Refugee Run Club.

Each Saturday morning long-time North Carolinians, immigrants from around the world, college students and new arrival refugees meet at an apartment complex where many refugees live. As they gather in a loose circle, people shake hands, laugh and begin to introduce themselves. Usually, people say their names, what country they were born in and how long they’ve been in Durham. I’m always struck by the way that our refugee clients take such pride in saying the precise number of days they’ve been in the United States, even when they’ve been here four to five months or more.

After our brief introductions, we run. Sometimes we run a loop of three to five miles around the apartment complex and sometimes we take field trips to local running paths. These morning runs provide refugee clients with ideas for new places to go in the community and empower them to understand that they can leave their apartment complexes.

Not only is a run club a chance to get some exercise, it also provides a new way for locals to develop relationships with new arrivals. While many community members might not feel comfortable assisting with an English as second language class or taking a refugee to a doctor’s appointment, a run is a natural part of their week. If community members are fast enough to keep up with refugee runners, they learn what it’s like to experience American life for the first time. Often clients will share about the job search, what it’s like to shop at Wal-Mart or how they are keeping up with family members in their home countries.

As we run, we often practice vocabulary like “trail, forest, street, stoplight.” Sometimes refugees teach us the words for these terms in Arabic, Tigrinya or French. When we return from our morning jog, the runners always wait on the sidewalk until all of the Run Clubbers get back. When the weather is nice family members and neighbors will join on the pavement and cheer for their favorite runners as they cross the finish line.

A few weeks ago I asked a group of our fastest Sudanese guys, “Who finished first? Who won?” One of the young men smiled back and me and said, “We all finished together.” I hope that Run Club is like that – that across nationalities, languages and life experience, it gives us an opportunity to share something in common, to all finish together.

Storyteller: Kelly Cohen-Mazurowski, United States

An entrepreneurial spirit, undaunted

Saad Omar Adam, 29, grew up in Sudan. He was studying to be a mechanic in 2004 when violent conflict forced him to flee to neighboring Libya, where he finished his studies and found work dismantling junked cars. After a few years Saad became the owner of the scrap yard. Amidst the turmoil during the 2011 Libyan Revolution, Saad left his career, his savings and his newfound home to seek refuge in Malta.

Saad did not waste any time in establishing himself as a community figurehead in his new place of residence. For four years, Saad imported Libyan clothes for other refugees living in Malta. Always the businessman, he continued to grow his operation until he was accepted to resettle in the United States as a refugee.

This time it was not civil unrest that brought Saad to a new place, but rather the opportunity to let his entrepreneurial spirits flourish, unhindered by overt anti-immigrant sentiment. “America is the paradise,” Saad says of his reasoning to come here. “There is law in America, respect. There’s not injustice. In Malta people say ‘Black? We don’t like black,’…[In the U.S.] all the people are the same. That’s the best thing.”

In the United States, CWS found Saad an apartment, oriented him to the local public transportation, enrolled him in English classes and in a matching grant employment program that incentivizes refugees to become self-sufficient through employment. With CWS employment staff assistance, Saad quickly found full-time work at an industrial laundry facility and he took driving classes.  At the end of the 10-week course, Saad was CPR and first aid proficient. Only a few months later, he got a driver’s license and bought a seven passenger van.

As successful as he is, Saad’s dream of American paradise is far from over. He wants to improve his already-excellent English and go back to school. He talks about finding work as a truck driver. Saad says of his future goals, “I want to go to business school and start my own business.” One thing is certain: whatever Saad wants to do, he’ll find a way to do it.

Storyteller: As told by Saad Omar Adam to Edwin Harris

How This Mom Saved Her Family from Disaster

Pich Khorn, 53, and her husband, Dom Soy, 54, live in a small house in Slarlak village in western Cambodia. They have two teenage sons, a widowed daughter and an infant grandchild who live with them. Khorn rents land from a neighbor to grow rice for her family’s daily needs.

Floods hit their village in October 2013 and destroyed the family’s rice paddy. Immediately, the disaster forced their oldest son and the daughter to seek work outside Cambodia. Their younger son had to drop out of school to help his parents get by by doing household chores while they went out to earn money as day laborers.

CWS prioritized working with the Khorn and Soy family together with our strong network of partners in the region: Rural Development Association, DanChurchAid and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department.

In July 2014, Khorn met with CWS recovery team members to decide the most productive way to use a small cash grant. Khorn joined with community members who were also receiving grants and together they brainstormed on how best she could spend the funds. Khorn decided to spend her grant in part for rice and basic food to feed her family. She bought green mustard and string bean seeds and gardening tools to grow the vegetables. Soon, there was food both for the family to eat and also to earn a small income.

After a few months, Khorn combined her vegetable sales earnings and her husband’s day labor wage savings to start a small grocery shop. Soy helps his wife run the store and works in the garden plot and no longer has to go too far from Slarlak for daily wage labor. Khorn is gradually growing her business by responding to requests for products from other villages.

The couple’s success means that both their son and daughter have been able to come home and help run the grocery shop as it keeps expanding. The family no longer worries about food shortages as before. Khorn has gained self-confidence and has become more optimistic about the future and is now active in village matters.

When visiting with CWS team members, Khorn expressed her thanks to everyone involved in helping her and her family recover after the floods. It is a point of pride and hope for the CWS Cambodia team that Khorn had the strength and courage in the face of disaster to organize her family to rebuild and reunite. Now her family is financially secure and more able to withstand future natural disasters in the region, which are inevitably to come.

That is something all CWS supporters can take pride in.

Storyteller: Pich Khorn, Cambodia

New Life, New Friends

I visited Seng Nu “Sandy” Pan and Ni Hluan at their two-bedroom apartment near Duke University last week to talk about the changes in their lives since being resettled by CWS. Their apartment is sparsely decorated, but homey and personal nonetheless. They both greeted me with their usual energy and enthusiasm. A few months ago, they were both star pupils in my intermediate-level English class. Nowadays I do not see them a lot, so it was good to catch up and talk.

When I asked the two young women about their lives before coming to the United States, their eyes glazed over. The glimmer faded from their cheerful faces and the laughter bouncing off of their apartment walls froze mid-echo and fell to the ground. After a few long moments, they start to mention their “problems” and “troubles,” but chose not to go any deeper. It’s clear that these women have more on their minds than their difficult childhoods.

As teenagers, Sandy and Ni Hluan fled to Malaysia from war-torn Burma in search of safety and stability. In Malaysia, they worked long hours in restaurants. At the end of March 2014, after waiting for longer than four years, they were accepted to travel to the United States as refugees. The CWS office in Durham, North Carolina, welcomed them with a comfortable apartment, a warm meal and resources to help them start a new life in the United States. “Everyone at CWS was so polite,” Sandy said. Even though the two friends are happily employed—Sandy as a server in a restaurant and Ni Hluan as a sushi chef at Whole Foods—they both have bigger ambitions.

When we talked of their plans for the future, all the tension from speaking about the past melted away; they erupted with enthusiasm. Earlier this year, they both placed into Durham Technical Community College’s highest-level ESL classes. They hope to continue their education at Durham Tech as nursing students. “Going to college is the most important for us,” Sandy said.

I asked Sandy and Ni Hluan if they have any parting words, anything that they don’t want left unsaid. They fell silent for nearly a minute before Sandy spoke up: “I’m very happy to be here. This is my dream to be in another country.” Ni Hluan agreed. “New life. New transition. Really happy.”

Storyteller: Edwin Harris, United States

From Decrepit Classrooms to a Praise-Worthy School: How Parents and Teachers in a Kenyan Village Did It

When Head Teacher (Principal) Sasi Kabaka took the reins at Gosese Primary School in Western Kenya, Gosese was a “school” in name only.

“The picture that one could visualize of this place was horrifying,” Kabaka recalled. Students were being instructed under the shade of trees; what few classrooms did stand were doing so only barely. “There were just small five feet by four feet structures that actually were supposed to be condemned.”

The mere 47 students enrolled that year were taught by three instructors. Newly assigned educators were instantly discouraged at the sight of the crumbling and secluded campus. An assignment to this school felt like a punishment. Consequently, “there were no role models here,” Head Teacher Kabaka lamented.

All that changed when dedicated teachers solicited the help of the government, businesses, and NGO’s, including the CWS Africa School Safe Zones program, which recognized the potential in Kabaka and his fellow teachers and offered encouragement and training that has transformed Gosese Primary School.

Kenyan primary institutions typically provide classes up to eighth grade, but Gosese did not accommodate children beyond fourth. The government used Gosese as a “feeder school,” from which students were expected to go to a distant school for fifth grade. Sadly, the more distant schools were never fed for long.

“Once they were moved to other schools, after a few months they would drop out,” Kabaka explained.

The decrepit infrastructure and unmotivated teachers at Gosese set students up for failure. “We had very muddy classrooms,” remembers Frederick Mwita, senior teacher and the only staff member who has been at Gosese longer than Kabaka. “Our learners were sitting on stones and that was making learning very difficult.”

His disgust with the grave neglect suffered by the resilient students of Gosese Primary School led Head Teacher Kabaka to vow to find a way to give the children the role model they had long been deprived of.

Kabaka and his staff protested the Ministry of Education’s intention to continue using Gosese as a feeder and presented his proposal to revitalize the school. “He said we are going to remain firm to make sure that this school grows to higher levels,” Fredrick Mwita recalls.

Were the government officials offended by this objection?

“No, in fact they were impressed,” Kabaka said with a laugh, “and they gave us support. We convinced them. We told them that these kids need quality education and we had the will to assist them. They were very positive, and they accepted. So, the idea of making it a feeder school was shelved, and now they are really supporting us.”

With this green light, Sasi Kabaka and his band of teachers embarked on a reformation, but how long could their ambition endure without adequate resources and support?

Thanks to its compassionate donors, CWS was able to fan the flames of their fire by providing the school with necessities including desks and a seed grant of 4,500 USD towards the construction of classrooms.

CWS also organized peer learning events so that teachers and parents could learn successful strategies from their counterparts in other CWS School Safe Zones; held training sessions for the small staff and school management committee (parent teacher organization), helped teachers persuade parents of the importance of a good education– including for girls– and the importance of raising funds to improve the school’s infrastructure.

As a result of the CWS seed grant and training in fundraising, parents were able to solicit most of the money required for classroom construction themselves by obtaining grants from the government, area businesses, and the community.

Added encouragement came when, for the very first time, a Gosese alumnus advanced to secondary school. Recently, the Kenyan Government showed its support for Gosese by honoring its request for an additional teacher, which brings the staff to eight. There school also has a new fifth grade. Most impressive, though, is the school’s growth from 47 students in 2007 to 271 students by 2013 and the addition of a fifth grade.

Alongside CWS, the staff and parents of Gosese changed the lives of everyone in the community—and for the first time, gave their students role models to emulate.

Storyteller: Sasi Kabaka, Kenya

What Education Meant to One Refugee Mother

Amal* fled from violence in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan to find safety for herself and her three children in Egypt. CWS partner St. Andrew’s Refugee Services offers psychosocial support, legal assistance and education services for refugees and other vulnerable migrants in Cairo, her new home. As Amal describes, “I came here to ask for help. [One of the program directors] looked at our situation and immediately started helping. That day, when she first saw us…for three days I had gone without food for the kids.”

Amal’s was situation was assessed and staff worked with UNHCR to identify support that was available. “I restarted my studies. I started Arabic classes… They opened everything so I had what I needed,” Amal says. “This is what improved my situation, because I started doing lovely things I like to do, teaching my kids.”

Smiling, she reflects on the difference StARS has made for her. “Really, there was a change. When I arrived here, I didn’t know how to read and write. I had no previous educational background. Because of StARS, I joined college, graduated from there, and have started doing pastoral work.” In 2014, Amal completed coursework in Pastoral Ministry / General Ministry at the Petrescue Institute in Cairo. She now leads a weekly group of women on a voluntary basis.

Amal continues, “I became someone who gives support. I talk to women who have the same problems as I did. I rent an apartment and live there with my family and also use the apartment for meetings with women… I am very happy for that, because I am doing good things. The women have improved and progressed.”

“While in the psychosocial program, I was not well. I was thinking of suicide… I was always blaming myself, that I was the reason for all of this,” she says. “But now, I think how we are always together, one family full of hope, tomorrow will be better than today. This is the difference between our family earlier and now. We conquered all that difficulty.”

Amal and her family continue to face challenges. It is difficult to cover the needs of her children on her salary, and there was a fire in her apartment earlier this year. But Amal maintains her positive outlook and looks towards the future and to giving back. She wants to help other refugees who have lost family, to work with women in situations similar to what she experienced.

For refugees in Cairo where life can often seem hopeless, Amal’s words shed light: “Really, I am very happy. I don’t know how to describe my happiness. My kids and I have been helped…I hope to offer to others what they offered me. Frankly, I am thankful for everything here.”

* Name changed as a precaution due to general protection concerns for refugees living in Cairo.

Storyteller: Amal