RESPECT International Blog

by Mohammed Riazuddin

Austin W Ngabwe, who was born on March 16, 1977, in Baraka, Democratic Republic of Congo, is a refugee now living in Kenya. Here in Kenya, he is volunteering with refugees from different countries such as D.R. Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan and Burundi.

He is also contact teacher at a school called Elite Friends Academy. Austin thanks Marc Schaeffer, founder and coordinator of RESPECT International, for helping his school to connect with many schools in the world through the letter exchange programme.

In the communities, refugees are facing numerous challenges, many of which they find hard to overcome in their present condition. Some of the major problems are:

• Lack of education among refugee communities: Because of this, they are not able to land a job. Austin sincerely appeals to organizations to come to their aid and provide some training institutions so that refugees may learn to be self reliant.He says that there are many youth in his community who have finished secondary education but they haven’;t attended college/university or any training institution. He feels that this situation is very dangerous because it could lead them to other abnormal behavior such as alcohol, drugs, gangs, etc.
• Maternity complications: This is a very big problem for women in this area. Community members are not able to pay the maternity bill and most of them give birth at home because they are not working. Just last year, they had four cases of child mortality in his community.
• Lack of proper food and shelter: Food and shelter are sensitive elements for refugee communities where the majority of the families have only one meal a day. Sometimes, even that is not guaranteed because some spend all day without getting food. Right now they have three families who had to leave their house and are living in the church because they haven’t been able to pay their house bill.

Elite Friends Academy is where the majority of the children from refugee and poor family communities are gaining free education. As of now, they have 85 children in the school. The challenges they face are lack of proper food, uniform, books, and other learning materials.

Austin understands that children cannot concentrate and perform well in class if they are not properly fed. He is planning to have a feeding programme that can be offered both at school and in the community at large.