RESPECT International Blog

by Raja M Ali

Everybody accepts that life can be unfair. But maybe it is not.

At the surface level, Atuu Waonaje’s life is an embodiment of injustice, cruelty and unfairness. He was born poor in an impoverished country and became a refugee at 15 years of age. Still a teenager, he lost his parents, had no possessions and was forced to take care of not only himself but also his brother.

How can fate be more unjust to a person? But looking deeper, we realize that while nature took many things away from Atuu, it also gave him gifts — such as compassion, drive and the confidence to make something out of nothing — which few of us can claim.

Turmoil, calamities and injustice didn’t bog down Atuu and while still in a refugee camp in Tanzania, he started CELA, the Centre for Youth Development and Adult Education, which was so successful that it won him the Women’s Refugee Commission Voice of Courage Award in 2007.

CELA, however, is an old story and Atuu is not resting on his laurels. He has recently started a new project called One Book Project (OBP).

Atuu observed that:

• There is neither a resource centre nor a library in his city, Fizi Territory (in the Democratic Republic of Congo), which means a large number of students have no access to information except what they learn at school;
• Young guys have not much to do after school. They generally do not have a habit of reading for pleasure or information and most even don’t know how to use a dictionary;
• People have books which are unused.

Ordinary people would have looked at the situation and done nothing but Atuu started OBP which collects books from various individuals and then puts them in a resource centre/library for use by locals. The main aims of the project are:

• Promoting a reading culture among community members who have lost that culture due to the war. Maybe starting a reading week.
• Empowering villagers with skills through books and connecting them with the world.
• Increasing literacy.

Atuu has already managed to collects a small number of books but for his project to achieve these aims, he needs your help. You can reach him by email.

As part of an ongoing commitment to improving the lives of refugees across the globe, RESPECT is looking to implement a project allowing sponsor schools to support their partner refugee communities by raising funds to purchase a Sun Oven.

Sun ovens are an environmentally-friendly device used to harness solar power to provide cooking facilities. They are manufactured by Sun Ovens International from Elburn, Illinois, USA.

Deforestation is a major issue worldwide, threatening not only the global environment, but the very existence of the 2 billion people worldwide who rely on wood and charcoal to prepare their food. Women often have to spend hours every day scavenging for enough wood to cook for their entire family, or to boil unsanitary water.

In areas where a large refugee influx has occurred, this problem is multiplied tenfold, as thousands of families compete for this valuable natural resource. In areas around refugee camps, the deforestation process can occur at a frightening rate. 25% of Africa is now deforested, leaving vast tracts of land useless for cultivation purposes. In Haiti, the figure stands at 90%.

The effects of stripping the land are devastating. Not only does deforestation increase the risk of landslides and avalanches during the rainy season, but the smoke produced from the hundreds of small cooking fires contributes to respiratory infections, tuberculosis and cancer.

Sun Ovens provide a clean and safe alternative. Once set up, a Sun Oven, essentially a large metal box with panels that focus the suns rays into the cooking area, has no running costs. The small ovens can cook meals for a family of up to 8 people, while the large ‘Villager’ ovens can provide up to 1,200 meals a day and save 384,000 pounds of wood a year.

Such is the appeal of the sun oven to environmentalists that even people in the US have started to use the smaller version. Las Vegas resident, Mike Little, began using a Sun Oven in preparation for potential Y2K issues, and has never stopped. Little uses his several times a week to prepare bread, rice and meat, and is now trying to raise the profile of the device amongst his fellow citizens.

“I want to raise awareness so that local agencies can get involved,” Little said, while demonstrating the Villager Solar Oven at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Earth Day celebration on April 10. “When you’re doing something for the environment you’re doing something for people.”

Worldwide, 2,500 small ovens and 250 large ovens are in use. These ovens are proving invaluable to refugee communities, not only taking away the need to toil collecting fuel, but providing income to those refugee communities who are using the ovens to bake bread for sale in the wider community.

RESPECT coordinator, Marc Schaeffer, feels raising funds to purchase these ovens for communities would be a worthwhile addition to RESPECT’s work. “We hope to introduce this idea to our sponsor schools, and also put the ovens up on our e-store. We are going to propose the idea to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and refugee communities to see if they would be interested in receiving a sun oven. From there, it’s simply a matter of raising the funds,” he said.

A small sun oven costs $299USD, while the larger version, which can support an entire community, and provide jobs and valuable skills, costs $10,000USD. A great deal of fundraising will be required to bring this project to fruition, but the concrete benefits for refugee communities are clear.

The beauty of this project is that by donating funds to help the communities, donors are also helping themselves. Deforestation, and the resulting changes to the global climate, is an issue affecting us all, and every sun oven operating in the field will help preserve the future of the planet.

kindly written by Michael Logan