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Congolese starts a construction company with many other refugees

I escaped Congo because they wanted to arrest me in order to trace my father. (I still don’t know where he is nowadays!) My life in refugee camp Kakuma was very difficult at the beginning. But since I started a successful construction company with 17 other refugees last year, life has changed for the better. And now we want to create branches in different places in Kenya and other parts of the world! My name is Claude Daco Sadiki. I'm 28 years and single. I fled from my country, Congo because of political fear. My mother and siblings were residing in the village while my father and I were living in town. My father was working with the government. However, government properties got lost in his office. (I never got to know what properties exactly were missing.) He was to be arrested but he escaped to an unknown place and I still don’t know his whereabouts up until today. The government security personnel started looking for me. They wanted to arrest me in order to trace my father. I didn't know about the plan of the government. But luckily other government officials who were friends of my father gave me money and told me to escape to a far place. From there, I was advised to run to Kakuma and I arrived in Kakuma in 2013. After reaching Kakuma, I found everything was different. Life was hard, climate was different, hot and dry; different people with different languages and it was hard for me to understand myself with them due to language barriers. The food was poor because I was always eating only one type of food. But since I had nothing else, I accepted the challenges. Life was getting tougher and tougher and I thought of what to do in order to support myself. I noticed that people in Kakuma wanted experts to construct their houses. This was a great opportunity for me because I was trained in Congo on masonry, carpentry, plumbing, welding, and painting of houses. I started to work locally with community members. I built their houses and got paid instantly. It was not based on contract. But things changed when I met with Francis, a Dutch expert from PUM Netherlands senior experts who supported Africa Action Help International (AAHI) to establish a business incubation program in Kakuma. To help refugees and host communities to start and grow businesses. Francis advised me to work on contract terms. And to form a construction group with other refugee experts. I managed to meet with seventeen experts who were also trained in Don Bosco in masonry work. I shared the idea with them and they all accepted to work with me. In addition, we decided to look for two journalists who would be posting our work on twitter. So, we started our own company, Dabibu Building and Construction Company (DBC). After the formation, we went to the office of AAHI. We shared information about our company with Bruno who was working in the office of livelihood. He was embraced with our great idea. We were assigned to build offices for AAHI in Kakuma-3, on contract terms. We did the work very well and that made our company known in Kakuma. Currently, we work on contract terms with agencies like AAHI, National Council of Churches of Kenya NCCK and Peace Winds. These agencies deal with the construction of houses in the refugee camp. The services we offer include masonry, carpentry, plumbing, welding, and painting of houses. Our company is helping the communities in many ways. We provide quality services to people because we are all trained and know the work very well. Moreover, we have made the work of the agencies simpler, because our services are always available and ready. We have also proved to the world that even refugees are capable of doing the work like any other person. Refugees have now realised that they can work towards changing their lives. In addition, we do employ people from different communities to work with us during the contract and this is helping them to get money. The number of people we employ depends on the amount of work to be done, so there is no specific number of people. When we started this company, nobody believed it would prosper like the way it does today. It was started by just mere refugees who had nothing in the accounts. But today we have something in the account. This company has changed our lives greatly. We get enough money to support ourselves, our families, our relatives, and even our friends. The success of our company is based on the help of the AAHI business incubation. The business incubation has helped us by giving us training. This training was based on the skills and knowledge of running a successful business. Actually, we benefitted so much from their training, we gained business managerial skills and after the training we were able to run the business successfully because we were taught on various roles like role of the director, coordinator, and others. Great thanks to business incubation! Lastly, we have many future plans for our company and these are; firstly, we want to create branches of the company in different places in Kenya and other parts of the world to provide services to the community. Secondly, we are planning to open hardware shops in different places in order to provide construction materials to the communities. Thirdly, we are planning to create a permanent staff that will be working with us and get paid at the end of the month.

Interested to get into contact with Claude? Email: info@i-am-kakuma.online

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alineaTraumatised refugee starts scholarships program in Kakuma

I am a traumatized refugee from South Sudan living in Kakuma, but smart and eager to help schoolboys and girls finish their schoolings, especially boys. UNHCR has programs for aiding girls and teaching them life skills but what about the boys? I therefore started Kakuma Mentorship Warriors to not only help the students in Kakuma with their education but to also inspire them that despite everything they have gone through or are still going through, there is hope for them for I too went through those challenges and have not yet made it but on my way. Our members make monthly contributions to finance our activities and we are hoping to sponsor a few top students in April next year. Even though I have gotten a scholarship to Canada to pursue my studies, I will continue the program until every student in Kakuma is somewhere in life. My name is Akon Rhoda Juach and I am twenty years old. I was born in a large extended family as the first born to my mother. My mother brought my siblings and I to Kakuma in 2002 due to numerous reasons. My mother’s in-laws were frustrated by the fact that she gave birth to a girl as the first born unlike her co-wives who gave birth to boys. The fact that my other siblings were also girls did not help but make matters worse for her. Their relationship deteriorated and the outbreak of community clashes forced us to flee to Kakuma. Settling in Kakuma was a challenge itself and when we finally registered under UNHCR, we had already experienced our fair share of challenges. We knew no one hardly spoke the local language which made it quite difficult to socialize. My mother was skilled in embroidery and through her skills we were able to get our daily bread. She worked hard in her embroidery shop and with time her products spread throughout the camp. She then resorted to educating because she believed it was the best tool she could equip us with to prepare us for the future. My siblings and I therefore went to school in Eldoret because there were barely any schools in the camp at that time. However, in class 6 my mother’s business was not doing so well and she could no longer pay for my school fees. I was therefore supposed to drop out of school were it not for the manager of the school I studied who decided to educate me for free in the school because of my good performance. I performed well in my end of primary school exams and was called to a national school called Bunyore Girls high school. I still studied hard and passed my end of secondary school exams though it was my uncle who educated me. After school I came to be fully united with my family. It was during my work as a volunteer teacher when I noticed a void in the camp society that inevitably needed to be filled. Most students and young people in general especially the boys lack a guiding hand in the way to approach contemporary life issues and problems in general. I witnessed every day in the school I was teaching in how these students always had issues from as simple as not understanding anything in class to sometimes even unintentionally offending the teacher who would mercilessly cane them. UNHCR had a program for aiding girls and teaching them life skills but what about the boys? I therefore started Kakuma Mentorship Warriors to not only help the students in Kakuma with their education but to also inspire them that despite everything they have gone through or are still going through, there is hope for them for I too went through those challenges and have not yet made it but on my way. I spoke to like-minded colleagues and together we formed the program on the 12^th of September 2021 with me as the chairlady. The program now does remedial for students in school where we not only supplement the students learning but also teach them life skills. Our members also make monthly contributions to finance our activities and we are hoping to sponsor a few top students in April next year after the results for the end of primary school national exams are out. Our focus is on both boys and girls, and we want to equip them with all the skills they need both socially and academically to not only change their lives for the better but to also change their communities. I’ve had a few challenges which is something that goes without saying. We have had a challenge with accessing students and students being able to get our services though we are working on it. We are also working on taking our services online by creating our website where people from everywhere can know about us. I have also had some resistance in the community where some people including some of my peers are telling me that what I am doing is useless and that I should get married. This honestly gives me more strength to continue with my program in order to change our society so that ten years from today, when a young woman like me is starting an impactful program, she will be thanked instead of being told, ‘’Go and get yourself a husband.’’ Even though I have gotten a scholarship to Canada to pursue my studies, I will continue the program until every student in Kakuma is somewhere in life.

Kakuma
Turkana
Kenya

Learn more

info@i-am-kakuma.online

KakumaTurkanaKenya

Learn more

info@i-am-kakuma.online

Kakuma
Turkana
Kenya