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| "We started our schooling under a tree" |
| Desperate in Damascus: UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador hears stories of suffering and courage |
| Thank you from Jahanshah Assadi |
| See your money in action |
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Robert Salin, External Relations Officer and Peter Joshi, Field Worker
While our Emergency Response Team is there to help people survive an immediate humanitarian crisis, the rest of our work focuses on assisting refugees build a new life. Here are just a few examples of how we are helping people to start again.
In this issue, we focus on UNHCR's successful activities in the following 3 countries: Uganda, Darfur, and Nepal.
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Gemma Tracee Apiku, former Ugandan refugee and Oxford University student. Photo © and courtesy of Gemma Tracee Apiku |
Uganda 
On World Refugee Day in June, former Ugandan refugee Gemma Tracee Apiku, now an Oxford University student, spoke for many when she said: “I always hoped and wished for a better future than the traumatizing life I found myself living at a refugee camp at a very tender age.” Gemma is a testament to the determination of many refugee children, and to the difference people like you can make through financial support. Having started school in a refugee camp, Gemma is now writing her thesis for a Masters in humanitarian science and plans to become an aid worker, helping others in situations similar to those she experienced as a child.
Read the full story on the UNHCR International site.
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After working in a nearby factory, Zahia, 15, collects wood for her family. The high number of internally displaced in Darfur has damaged an already degraded environment. © UNHCR/H.Caux |
Mangoes, tomatoes, beans and potatoes are bringing local villagers and refugees together to plant and harvest food – and hope for the future – in West Darfur. Thanks to you, this year the UN Refugee Agency helped start three fruit, vegetable and tree nurseries in the conflict-ridden region. Tensions over scarce resources – from water to land to firewood – have been both a cause and a consequence of the Darfur conflict. But these groundbreaking projects are attracting hundreds of people, who are keen to improve their blighted environment and learn skills to help them survive.
Read the full story on the UNHCR International site
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Refugees in eastern Nepal's Goldhap camp read handouts on resettlement during a recent visit by UNHCR and high-ranking US officials. © UNHCR/C.Shin |
More than 5,000 ethnic Nepalese have fled from Bhutan seeking shelter in Nepal. Many live in one of seven refugee camps where UNHCR and its partners work to ensure their health and safety. When the distribution of kerosene was halted in 2005, the light in public spaces provided by kerosene lanterns was extinguished, leaving the camps extremely dangerous at night. With the support of Canadian donors, this year UNHCR instituted a solar powered light project that now illuminates the camps, dramatically improving security – a priceless improvement for refugees who have lived in fear.
See your money in action When emergency strikes, highly trained members of the ERTeam and vital supplies are on their way within hours – thanks to you. You can see here how important the ERTeam’s life-saving assistance was in just the first half of 2007. Between January and June this year, you helped the ERTeam… … deliver life-saving assistance to refugees in 21 countries:
By the end of 2007 our ERTeam will have hit the ground running in many more places and helped many more people. …send 107 trained volunteers to the emergency frontline. Vital action and assistance: this year we re-opened Teferi Ber camp in Ethiopia, where our ERTeam were on the frontline of providing food, cooking supplies, tents, blankets, sleeping mats and more to thousands of Somalian people who had fled the violence and chaos of the continuing war in their homeland.
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