Emergency support for Tigray, Ethiopia

While we are working in conflict affected communities we came across several children from a marganilized people group whose parents have been kidnapped by forces from a neighbouring country. No-one knows the fate of these people and the local community has spontaneously started infromal foster care for these children. But this leaves the families who are already facing food insecurity in a big problem. Abraham's Oasis is giving cash support to these families and are encouraging the families to invest this money in something that will raise their family income, like livestock.

This is Selam's story:

Selam is a 15 year old girl, during the conflict the family was together in their house when the enemy soldiers came to their house. They told the men to come out of the house and go with them. Her father and brother followed the soldiers and they were shot in the compound of their house. After killing them the soldiers returned to the house and they kidnapped the mother, grandmother, Selam  and 4 siblings, age 3, 5, 11 and 17 years old. They were taken to an unknown location and camp in the enigbouring country. 

Selam has a 30 year old, married, half sister from her mother's side who was not with them when all of this happened. After the sister heard what had happened she decided that she could not be at peace and she went to the neigbouring country to search for her family.  She went alone, hding for place to place and finally found her family in a camp.  She told the guards of the camp that her family was inside and they allowed her to go inside. 

After she arrived she checked on the family, she decided to start a secret discussion with Selam to plan an escape for the both of them as she was very worried that Selam would be sent to an army camp e forced to train as a soldier. After 5 days, at midnight, the guards of the camp were sleeping and they managed to quietly escape from the camp and return to their country and their home. 

Back home Selam decided to live with another 37 year old sister who is married and has 3 little children. She is currentlybusy helping her sister and the children.Unfortunately food is still scarce and the family is hungry.

Abraham's Oasis has given cash support to the family and the older sister has decided to invest the money in some chickens in the name of Selam. The egs and future chicks will help the family to earn some extra income. They were very happy with this assistance.

Selam is very introvert and not talking much about what has happened to her. We are following her with the help of a psychologist, to make sure she will receive the help she needs after this traumatic event. The fate of the rest of the family is not known which remains a big worry for all involved.

Abraham's Oasis has been busy with all sorts of interventions in the community. As the situation slowly continues to improve we are currently doing assesments in 3 area's where we want to assist the people. Hopefully we can start there in September.

We have helped  7 schools with notebooks (30.000) and pens (10.000) and 2 of these schools also received black boards.

In our last report we said we were working in a small community of around 4 thousand people. The work there is going well. The people are from the Kunama community and they speak their own language, for this reason we have employed and trained 2 professionals from that community, one nurse and one social worker. We have decided that before the economic empowerment, it is better to give them some other trainings to first try to bring about a mental change as once they get into business they may not have enough time to come for trainings and meetings.

We have done several trainings about Gender Based Violence, Prevention of Sexual  Exploitation and Abuse, Positive parenting skills training and harmful traditional practices.

There are many harmful traditional practises from female genital mutulation, early marriage and witchcraft to name a few. We have been asked to continue by the community to continue the trainings so that everyone will be educated in these areas and measures can be taken community-wide with the help of the local administration to minimize these practises. The people seem open and are actively participating in the trainings.

Because of the trainings and the efforts of the 2 new staff members 3 survivors of Gender Based Violence have come forward. We are helping them within their community. The plan is to open a Women and Girls friendly space in the site where they are residing so that hopefully more women will feel free to come forward.

Thank you for your support for these important activities!