It has been exactly one month since John first walked into Refugee Camp Alexandria.
Though it has been a tough week with the rain and the resultant flooding, we are going to focus on the positive and what has been achieved in such a short time.
When he first arrived, the camp had been open for just 2 days and had only about 250 refugees all looking very confused as to what the future held. He was very lucky to come across a camp with a very co-operative army who genuinely cared about the refugees but we were not quite sure what they could do with a limited budget.
He was shown a space that could be used for storage and distribution of vital supplies. What it did lend itself to was a form of shop. He was lucky enough to meet an amazing group of locals who also wanted to help. They introduced him to a builder who was able to supply supermarket shelves and so the “Free Shop” was born, a very dignified way of doing distribution.
Next we identified a building ideal for conversion into a School, Canteen and Community Kitchen, plans have now been drawn up for conversion and submitted to the Army and hopefully we will soon be able to start work.
During the month we have had some amazing help from a number of very hard working volunteers. This has enabled us to do much work within the camp and it’s now nearly 800 residents with over 450 children.
We have had such great support from very generous donors but the job has only just started and funds are much needed to continue the work (you’ll find our Donate button on the right).
We would like to thank everyone for there support, and could never have imagined just one month ago we would have made so much progress. We now have so many new friends living in the camp and it is a pleasure for all of us to be able to help these amazing people.
