project highlightSolar Cooker Project
We initiated the Solar Cooker Project in 2006 as a way of protecting Darfuri women and girls ̶ survivors of the Darfur genocide living as refugees in Eastern Chad ̶ by reducing their dangerous trips outside of the camps in search of firewood for cooking. We served hundreds of thousands of refugees in five camps – helping keep them safe and secure and empowering them as they build new lives Chad.
Then the situation on the ground changed: a tragic food crisis impacted our ability to increase women’s safety through the Solar Cooker Project.
Food Crisis in the Darfuri Refugee Camps
The changing conditions in Chad presented us with new challenges: food insecurity became the primary and most immediately pressing safety and security risk to the refugees. The World Food Program and United Nations Refugee Agency cut food rations due to increased demand for WFP and UNHCR assistance around the globe. Refugees in Chad are receiving less than 850 calories per person/per day, and some refugees report receiving closer to 250-500 calories per person/per day. In response to this desperate situation, we had to overhaul how we serve these refugees.
New Strategies for New Situations
Any organization working in regions affected by conflict, poor governance, and poverty – such as Eastern Chad where the Darfuris reside – must be nimble, and make changes to projects as dictated by the current situation on the ground. As such, JWW conducted several evaluations of the SCP over the years. We reviewed the evaluations thoughtfully and continually adjusted the Solar Cooker Project as needed. Previous evaluations all pointed to one overall conclusion: the project was working.
Under the new conditions of severe food insecurity, the basic model of preventing trips outside the camp became no longer feasible. Many men, women and children chose to leave the camps in order to do whatever they must to get more food for their families. After careful consideration, we suspended the work of the Solar Cooker Project, and turned our attention to increasing food rations and supporting programs that allow the Darfuri refugees to become more self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency will protect the Darfuri refugee community from the inconstancy of over-stressed international aid funding.
The Legacy of the Solar Cooker Project
Until significant political progress is made in Sudan, and it is safe for the Darfuris to return home, their dire situation in Chad must be improved. We at JWW are determined to find initiatives which provide sustainable solutions to support the refugees, and will be able to do so with your continued support. In keeping with the very purpose of the Solar Cooker Project, we will support and lead efforts to keep women and girls safe from sexual violence. The Solar Cooker Project was in essence a human security project, and we will continue to keep that as a central focus in all our work to empower and support the Darfuri people.
What You Can Do
Now is the time to take action on behalf of the Darfuri refugees and make a generous gift that will enable JWW to be at forefront of developing the strategies that will help ensure that they survive the current crisis. Thank you in advance for your support!
past projects
CHAD
Solar Cooker Project
Water Wells in the Refugee Camps
One of JWW’s key early efforts was to supply water wells in the refugee camps. Many schools participated by raising funds to supply one water well, each a life-line for 500 refugees. The wells were built with local supplies by local labor, organized and led by International Medical Corps, JWW’s implementing partner on the project.
Backpack Project
The Backpack Project was created so that frightened children in the Oure Cassoni refugee camp in Chad could attend schools run by our partner IRC. JWW distributed over 15,000 backpacks filled with shoes, books, school supplies, soap and toothpaste to school-aged children. The backpacks allowed each recipient to make the most of school under the most difficult of circumstances. Each backpack also contained something intangible, but essential to their well-being: hope..
In partnership with Tchad Solaire and KoZon, JWW completed installation of the grey water reclamation systems for the benefit of all families in the Iridimi and Touloum refugee camps in Chad. With the installation of inexpensive plastic sheeting and PVC pipes, women in refugee camps turned their family bathing areas into reservoirs for grey-water collection and used the collected water to irrigate small vegetable patches.
Sister Schools
JWW, in partnership with the Darfur Dream Team and top NBA players, sponsored the building, staffing and equipping of the Sudan Djedid (New Sudan) and Ali Dinar B Schools in the Djabal refugee camp in Eastern Chad. The schools, designed to serve over 4000 students, were the first of what was conceived as a series of schools to be built in the 12 Darfuri refugee camps in Chad. In partnership with the Dillon Henry Foundation and Gary Saltz Foundation, JWW also helped fund the Darasalam School in the Goz Amer refugee camp.
Little Ripples
Through our partner i-ACT, JWW supports Little Ripples, a preschool program tailored to a population exposed to severe trauma. In the Darfuri refugee camps, there is no formal education system for young children, leaving them unsupervised, vulnerable to the dangers of the camp, and at a disadvantage for the future. Little Ripples provides a safe and nurturing environment for some of the youngest refugees to learn in. With support from JWW, the first Little Ripples school opened in Goz Amer refugee camp in Eastern Chad in the summer of 2013. It serves 400 children. Now, the project is seeking to impact more children through a home-based model called Little Ripple Ponds.
SUDAN
Summer Educational Toy Lift
JWW partnered with Los Angeles area summer camps to bring school supplies to children in Darfur refugee camps. The JWW Summer Educational Toy Lift helped to build empathy, sensitivity, and responsibility for the plight of the refugees and to create a bond between summer campers and children in the refugee camps. JWW collected 15,000 items through this initiative. The educational toys were delivered by the IRC to several camps in North, South, and West Darfur.
Medical Clinics in Deleij and El Geneina
Working with the IMC, Jewish World Watch funded the construction of two permanent medical clinics to serve approximately 40,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) and resident conflict-affected populations of Darfur near the border of Chad.
Water and Sanitation Projects
JWW provided funding to the IRC to improve the provision of water in three refugee camps in Nyala and Kass (South Darfur) and the overpopulated and under-resourced Hamadiya camp in the Zalingei region (West Darfur).
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC)
BVES Girls Center
Elevating Justice
The Elevating Justice program is laying the foundation for genuine reform of the Congolese justice system and a restoration of the rule of law throughout eastern DRC by launching a new university law program at UCBC (Université Chrétienne Bilingue du Congo). This long-term strategy for truly elevating justice throughout eastern DRC is not just solving the problems of today, but investing in DRC’s future – a future that includes a transformed judiciary and genuine rule of law.
The Generation Hope program, implemented by our partners at Un Jour Nouveau/Africa New Day supports the most vulnerable children of Goma, North Kivu, providing education, mentorship and spiritual leadership. Through this program, 200 secondary students – some of whom live, unsupported, on the streets of the city – come together to receive lessons in language, geography, world history, mathematics and leadership. Graduates of Generation Hope are equipped to end the cycle of poverty and violence in their lives, thus becoming leaders and mentors in their own communities. Generation Hope further supports and strengthens the community with outreach events.
Mumosho Women’s Center and Home for Pregnant Teens
Too many young girls become pregnant as a result of rape and are subsequently shunned and abandoned by their families. In partnership with ABFEC/Action Kivu, the Mumosho Women’s Center provides housing for these young women and serves as a place of refuge, comfort and opportunity. The top floor of the Center offers housing for the girls and their children, while the bottom floor acts as a community center and training facility, where the girls and other vulnerable women in the community can access vocational skills and community education training as well as gather safely for community meetings.
Safe Motherhood
JWW funding supported women’s Solidarity Groups which purchased fields to cultivate and sell produce to pay for safe birthing collectives. Incorporating the men in the community, the program encouraged them to develop a plan for transporting women to hospitals if necessary and to remove the stigma attached to women who need help in delivering their babies without assistance as “a good wife would do.” Rather than having unused funds raised by individual women default to their husbands, the collectively managed funds would be reserved for any women who needed help paying the cost of a normal delivery in a health center, the cost of a C-section if necessary, and the cost of transportation.
Chambucha Rape And Crisis Center
Nearly every minute of every day, one woman or girl in Congo is raped. JWW provided funding to build the Chambucha Rape And Crisis Center and to train its staff of 40 community health workers, 32 nurses, 30 traditional birth attendants, 3 surgical nurses, and a lab technician, anesthesiologist and medical doctor. Today women and girls in Chambucha finally have access to the medical care they have needed for many years.
Fighting Sexual and Gender-based Violence
In order to fight sexual and gender-based violence, JWW is partnering with New Hope For Congo to reduce incidents of child rape, lower mortality rates, and provide a blood bank to New Hope Hospital in Kavumu, DRC, where many men in the area believe that raping young children will give them power to defeat their enemies, and magically cure them from diseases such as HIV/AIDS. A mass education campaign using billboards and radio messages is being used to fight this horrifying false narrative..
HEALing Arts
In partnership with HEAL Africa, JWW gave survivors of sexual violence in DRC a second chance. By teaching women vocational skills such as sewing and tailoring, the program offered them both a chance to pay for their medical treatment and a way to restart their lives when they were well enough to return home. Once trained, the women received a small grant to help them start their businesses in their home communities, helping with their reintegration.
Reintegration of Child Soldiers and Vulnerable Youth
In partnership with Laissez l’Afrique Vivre/Let Africa Live (LAV), JWW sponsored the reintegration of 50 former child soldiers. This program provided the children with vocational and professional skills training, basic education, medical and psychosocial care, and support for their burgeoning businesses after they graduated.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (CAR)
Dillon Henry Health Clinic
Dillon Henry (z”l), a leader amongst the many dedicated JWW youth activists, tragically died in the summer of 2007. Dillon’s leadership and passionate activism on behalf of those suffering in Darfur inspired all who came into contact with him. In his loving memory, the Dillon Henry Foundation worked with JWW to build the Dillon Henry Health Clinic in the Central African Republic, serving over 30,000 Darfuri refugees and local inhabitants.
Opal Green King Maternity Ward
In partnership with IMC, JWW rehabilitated a maternity ward in Sam Ouandja, CAR, serving both Darfuri refugees and local inhabitants. Rehabilitating the maternity ward was an urgent project – nearly 40% of the births in this area involve prolonged labor or complicated deliveries and the closest functional hospital is approximately 90 miles away.
JWW AND ISRAELI ACTIVISM FOR DARFURI REFUGEES AND CRITICALLY INJURED CONGOLESE
Bukavu Burn Center
JWW partnered with Moriah Africa and the Bukavu Provincial General Reference Hospital to fund eastern Congo’s first-ever Burn Center. Congolese surgeons were trained in plastic surgery and skin grafting techniques in Israel and later, Israeli doctors returned to Congo to help train even more Congolese surgeons and install Congo’s first skin-grafting equipment at the Bukavu Provincial General Reference Hospital.
Bialik Rogosin School: Darfuri Refugee Children in Israel
JWW supported the health and well-being of 81 Darfuri refugee children absorbed by the Bialik Rogosin School in Tel Aviv. After harrowing travel to Israel by foot, the children received hot meals, psychosocial counseling and health and hygiene workshops sponsored by JWW, which provided both the children and their parents with the essentials for ensuring the children’s success in the future.
How You Can Help
Support Seeds of Survival
Help us reach our goal of 500 sustainable gardens for Darfuris survivors.
Support Uyghur Human Rights
Urge your elected officials to support the Uyghur Labor Prevention Act.
Support Our Work
Your tax-deductible donation supports our anti-genocide work at home and abroad.