Feature Story from FORGE

Posted by admin on 11.01.2007 at 2:00 pm

Here’s the feature story from the most recent FORGE newsletter:

In Meheba Refugee Settlement, it’s hard not to notice Brigitte and Boniface, a married couple in their late 30s.  The proud parents of two young children, they have lived in Zambia as refugees for five years.  The couple was forced to flee the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002 when the school where Boniface taught was attacked by rebel forces.  At the time they fled, Brigitte was seven months pregnant with Easter, their oldest daughter, who would be born in prison after they crossed the border.  After a few months in separate prisons (their refugee status was difficult to achieve), Brigitte and Boniface reunited in Lusaka, where they lived for a few years as urban refugees before moving to Meheba.

With a degree in biochemistry from the University of Lubumbashi, Boniface speaks eleven languages fluently.  He has pursued careers in business and teaching in Zambia’s capital.  Despite his talents and qualifications, Boniface has faced numerous barriers to holding stable employment due to the high cost of work permits, and heavy prejudice against refugees.  Boniface currently works as the Office Manager for the FORGE Microfinance Institute (FMI) in Meheba. After more than a year of preparation and planning, Boniface recently helped FMI launch a Savings Program to encourage people in Meheba to put their money into savings.

You’ll find Brigitte working at her tailoring business in the center of Meheba’s largest market, spinning out clothing for the community.  Not only is Brigitte skilled on the sewing machine, but she has also put herself through an intensive business skills program in Lusaka which required her to walk more than 10 miles a day to and from class.  As her business thrives, more educational opportunities become available to the family.

Apart from their children and jobs, Brigitte and Boniface devote their time to a local Pentecostal congregation in Meheba, where Boniface serves as a Pastor.  At the moment, the couple does not know if they will repatriate to Congo should it become peaceful, or if they will try their luck applying for resettlement to a new country.  In the meantime, they focus on providing a safe home for their two children within the limited confines of Meheba, where they will wait.

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FORGE September Newsletter

Posted by admin on 09.07.2007 at 12:48 pm

Dear Friends of FORGE:

What a summer it has been!  Last time you heard from me, our teams were just arriving in Zambia.  Now, after a lot of hard work and inspiring results, FORGE closes its Project Implementation phase and turns things over to our 100+ refugee staff and FORGE Project Managers.

This has been, without question, the most successful season in the history of FORGE.  I have never had so many people - NGOs, community members, refugees - come to me and tell me what a success FORGE is.  We are truly making a massive positive impact on the lives of thousand of refugees.

From a huge refugee rights initiative in Meheba to a repatriation information center in Kala to a community-wide women’s center in Meheba, this summer has been chalk full of success stories.  We’ve been inspired by our volunteers, our refugee staff, the communities in which we work, and everyone else in the FORGE family.

Sincerely yours,

Kjerstin Erickson
Founder and Executive Director
_______________________________________
To learn more about FORGE, visit www.forgenow.org
To sign up for the FORGE newsletter, click here

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One Refugee’s Story of Hope and Perserverence

Posted by admin on 07.19.2007 at 2:04 pm

From Kjerstin Erickson, Founder and Executive Director of FORGE

“I just received this story from our field staff about a man named Antoine, a Congolese refugee who has been running one of our computer training labs since 2005.  We’ve all worked closely with Antoine for the past 2 years, yet strangely nobody knew his story.  It’s energizing and refreshing to hear about the things that the people around you have overcome – and with what strength and poise, you’d never know the difference…”.

Antoine was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1981.  When he was a 17 year-old schoolboy, the war came to his village. Because Antoine’s father’s job was to report on human rights abuses, Antoine’s family became a natural target for the invading army.  They raided his home, tied his father to a tree, and began to beat him.  The family fled to the bush for safety, but as they ran they heard gunshots ring through the night.  They didn’t hear from their father again, and were convinced of his murder. After his father’s death, Antoine went to live with an uncle.  His uncle owned a computer and taught Antoine some basic computer skills, enough to land him a job upon completion of high school.

As he worked, Antoine’s goal was always to go to college to further his computer education. In 2003, five years after his father’s disappearance and presumed death, Antoine received a letter with his father’s handwriting and signature.  Shocked and thrilled to hear that his father had survived, Antoine and his family traveled to Zambia to reunite. Their father had made it to Kala Kala Refugee Camp in Zambia , where he had been trying to reach his family for the past 5 years.  Because his father could not return to Congo for fear of his life, the family decided to stay together in Kala camp.  When FORGE went to establish a computer lab in Kala in 2005, Antoine’s computer experience made his the natural choice for Computer Instructor. Antoine accepted the opportunity to help his fellow refugees learn the same skills that had helped him in life, and for the past 2 years has been teaching a full load of classes in English, French and Swahili.

During this time, Antoine has written a computing textbook over 400 pages long in simple French, including topics in computer basics, Word, Excel, Access, Power Point, and Internet Explorer.   With Congolese refugees now returning home, many of Antoine’s former students have contacted him, reporting that they had secured jobs because of their basic computer knowledge. Antoine is ready to go to college, but refuses to leave until his assistants at the Computer Center are ready to take over in full.  In his time with FORGE, Antoine has learned the many ways that his skills can benefit others.  When he returns to college, he will study humanitarian organization management.  To this, he says, “I now know much about computers, so I’m dreaming to one day help other refugees when my refugee status is gone.”

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FORGE Does It Again!

Posted by admin on 07.05.2007 at 10:02 am

We recently heard from Holly Hickling, Camp Operations Coordinator for FORGE, currently on the ground in Zambia . FORGE has been a long-time partner of Better World Books, and we are proud to help support the work that they are doing in refugee camps in Zambia . Below is Holly’s update from one of FORGE’s latest undertakings:

These pictures are from the 2 weeks that I spent in Kala Camp last month, building an addition on the FORGE house. Well, for me it was not so much building as it was watching people build, and then paying them. I did get my hands dirty a couple of times, but I definitely don’t deserve as much credit as the men and women who really put their sweat into it.

This house was made from almost all local raw materials. The only things we brought in from town were nails, door hinges, and cement. When I arrived at the Kala House, the 1500 bricks for the addition were already drying in the sun in our yard. They had been made with water, mud from our yard, and rectangular wooden molds.

The refugee construction crew started digging the foundation, painstakingly measuring every angle to make sure the construction would be flawless. As the foundation was started, other people started gathering the additional raw materials we would need for the house, cutting grass, bamboo, and cord from the fields for our thatched roof. Local carpenters started working on cross beams, as well as doors, door frames, windows, and window frames.

When the bricks started going up, the mortar was made from mud from our yard. The addition includes a bedroom that can hold 5 people and a beautiful open air kitchen that will make cooking, eating, and socializing more easy, efficient, and fun. The bedroom has a nice hard cement floor, and the walls are also plastered nicely, again with mud from our yard. After the walls went up, strong cross beams were secured to the top, with sticks of bamboo running across the roof, tied to the cross beams with strong cord. Then dried grass was tied in bundles to the bamboo. I’m not claiming to understand the physics of the whole thing, but this house will withstand the elements for years.

Who knew that one’s backyard could contain such a wealth of building materials!

Just like this addition was efficiently built to be long lasting using local resources, the 5 students who sleep in it will build their programs in Kala Refugee Camp using local ideas, local talent, and local staff. The team of 10, who I participated in training in Los Angeles , will arrive in Kala Camp in one week. They will only stay for 2 months, but the programs that they work on, like our house, will be long lasting. Not only will refugees gain skills in reading, health education, business, and computer literacy to use in Kala Camp, but they will be able to take those skills back to D.R.Congo when they return to help rebuild their lives.

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Meheba Refugee Settlement in Zambia

Posted by admin on 12.13.2006 at 10:18 am

I recently received this email from Damon Luloff, a grad student at Boston University who has worked on multiple book drives through FORGE (www.forgeprogram.org) at BU. The BU book drives over the past two years have brought in over 7,000 qualifying books for Books for Africa!

Damon has worked in the Meheba refugee settlement in Zambia; he’s been managing a project called PACE (Project for African Community Empowerment). You can read more about Damon’s work on his fascinating blog: http://www.pacenow.blogspot.com/

Hamjambo! It’s been over a month since the last update, and a lot has happened. So this may be a long update. But it’s exciting and will be worth your time to read. I promise.

Both the men’s and women’s projects have quickly transformed from vague ideas to real projects that are being implemented. After deciding on what problems they want to address, both groups have accelerated into the implementation phase, meeting with me five times a week and often meeting for hours at a time on their own, even as their work load has increased due to cultivation. Let me fill you in on the development of each project over the past month. Ladies first…

The women are aiming to help people improve their harvest, the primary source of food and income for almost everyone in the community. They decided the most effective way to help people improve their harvests in the short- and long-term is by providing them with fertilizer and hiring a professional agricultural extension worker to give free workshops for anyone interested in the community. Most farmers are simply too poor to purchase fertilizer which, if used properly, can triple their yields. The workshops will educate people on the most effective modern farming techniques and help them to understand the science behind farming, enabling them to manage their farms more effectively instead of blindly doing whatever others are doing in hopes that it will work.

The women immediately realized that if they wanted to help farmers improve their harvest this year they would have to work hard and fast. People would be planting soon, and one of the two types of fertilizer needs to be applied at the same time that the seeds are planted. The women needed to hurry, but could not proceed hastily. They were facing a serious challenge–determining what price they would need to charge people in return for the loans of fertilizer. Instead of charging people up-front, the women are loaning people fertilizer in return for corn in May, after people have harvested their crops. The market rate for a fifty kilogram bag of fertilizer is about $32. The government subsidizes fertilizer for registered cooperatives which only have to pay $12 for the same bag of fertilizer. Unfortunately, it takes six months to register as a cooperative, meaning that we had to purchase the fertilizer at the market rate. People in Meheba are not accustomed to having to pay the market rate. They expected to pay no more than one hundred kilograms of corn per bag of fertilizer. We eventually calculated that we could make a slim but adequate profit if we charged people one hundred forty kilograms of corn per bag of fertilizer. When we conducted a last-minute feasibility analysis to see if people would be willing to pay that much per bag of fertilizer, only a handful of people said yes. We had cut the expenses a much as possible and reduced the profit margin substantially. There was nothing else we could do. We had to either go for it or wait until next year. But quite a few people in the community were expecting to receive loans and had prepared their fields in anticipation of applying fertilizer. (Apparently, how one prepares his field depends on whether he is planning on using fertilizer or not.) Those people would be very disappointed if the fertilizer was not distributed.
Read more…

Have your say » | Tagged Impact, Our Partners, africa, FORGE, Impact, Our Partners, partner updates

FORGE Update–Mwange Refugee Camp Computer Lab

Posted by admin on 10.18.2006 at 8:14 am

Dear Computer Lab Supporters:

The computer lab has gotten off to a great start.  The building has been completed, powered and outfitted with ten laptops, a printer, and furniture.  Classes began on 31 July.  We have seven basic computer skills classes with eighteen students each that will run for nine weeks.  Students are currently covering formatting in Microsoft Word before moving on to Microsoft Excel.  Additionally, other FORGE projects have utilized the computer lab, such as the new Mwange Journal and the Women’s Leadership and Empowerment Program.

In August, we held a community-wide contest to name the computer lab.  From the many entries, John and I chose pieces and formed the name Laboratoire Informatique Safari, in English - Computer Technology Lab: Journey.  With the help of another FORGE worker, we hired some community artists to help us design and paint an incredible mural on the inside wall with a  laptop whose keys turn into the cobble stones of the path.  The desktop scene blends into the scenery of mountains, forests, a river and a lake.  A man is traveling down the road, carrying the bundles of hay so commonly seen here, and a woman is rowing her boat across the lake, filled with packets of the typical Boca fish.

Read more…

Have your say » | Tagged Impact, Our Partners, africa, FORGE, Impact, Mwange