Dates: 2-4 December 2013
Place: Dadaab, Northern Kenya
UNCRD Africa Office has been implementing a capacity building and livelihood project in Dadaab refugee camp and its environs to improve the technical skills of both the refugees and the host community and enhance their socioeconomic conditions and self-reliance. The project aims at complementing humanitarian assistance with long-term development projects to help both the refugees and the host community by carrying out economic activities that boost their self-reliance and improve their sustainable livelihood. Towards this objective, to-date UNCRD Africa Office undertook a number of training programmes and implemented various livelihood projects which include:
- Provision of three thousand energy saving stoves to the refugees and the host community. This has immensely helped refugee women who reported that the stoves enabled them to save about 2/3 of the fire woods and one tenth of the needs to go out in the field to collect fire woods and thereby reduced the long distance women and young girls travel to fetch firewood and also reduced their exposure to GBV.
- Supporting women's group by providing 90 sewing machines and 90 sewing chairs to women's group in Dadaab to improve their livelihood. During a recent monitoring and follow up visit to the women's group, we observed that the tailoring business had started and the women's groups were making all kinds of clothes to sell and improve their livelihood.
- Provision of 100 desktop computers, 100 computer tables and 100 computers chairs 100 UPS, 10 printers and 11 computer modems to the youth which enabled them to start cyber cafe businesses. A recent visit to Dadaab also indicated that the computers have been installed, connected to the Internet and the youth are effectively running the cyber cafes.
- In partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), UNCRD also constructed 320 emergency transitional shelters and trained 110 members of the refugee and host communities in shelter production. This has provided short-term employment to approximately 100 members of the host and refugee communities, as well as business opportunities to local suppliers and contractors, contributing significantly to the economic wellbeing of the Dadaab area.
- UNCRD had collaborated with UNHCR and provided 798 family tents accommodating 4,000 refugees in the new refugee camp - Kambios. The project was vital in providing life-saving protection to refugees from the harsh Dadaab climate, in addition to reducing their exposure to other dangers including wild animals and criminal activities and GBV in the camps.
To monitor and follow up on these projects/activities, Ms. Takase, Director of UNCRD and Mr. Kumssa, Coordinator of UNCRD Africa Office visited several project sites and met with the beneficiaries in Dadaab Refugee Camp from 2-4 December 2013. During these visits/meetings, both the refugees and representatives of the host community were very grateful to UNCRD for the support provided to them and improving their capacity and livelihoods.