Officially “not accompanied”: they are the orphans that live in the refugee camp on the borders of Sudan. A Capuchin friar looks after them.
here aren’t limits to the marginalization and poverty.
Amongst the millions of African refugees and homeless, there are those who live in daily terror, those who risk loosing their lives (or loose it) trying to cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean – undergoing unimaginable sufferings – and reaching the European coasts, those who live the life of a refugee chronically, since years.
Well, the Eritrean refugees sum up to all these conditions.
And it is difficult to imagine a worse reality than that lived by those who have escaped to Sudan: a fragile hut in the desert, and nothing more. No water, no hospitality, no help from international agencies. Among these half a million desperate, that have escaped from the cruelest African dictatorships of the moment, is a lonely group of children and adolescents.
They range from 8 to 16 years of age, orphans, or “not accompanied” – according to the definition of the United Nations – that for diverse reasons find themselves at North-East of the Sudanese town of Kassala, on the borders of Eritrea.
Poor amongst the poor
Alganesh Fessaha, exponent of the Eritrean opposition who lives in Italy, has found them on indications of a Capuchin, friar Ghebray, the only one who, with poor means, tries to take care of them. Alga, preferred to Alganesh, other than taking forth the political activity for the democratization of Eritrea, is busy looking after, with every means possible, the million and a half countrymen escaped from her country.
Through the Capse (Centre of assistance to Eritrean refugees in Sudan, chaired by friar Marino Hailè, also Capuchin), she brings forth the long distance adoption of children and adolescents abandoned to themselves.
And has decided that something can be done: a school and an infrastructure that allows them to live a life just a little less harder.
“Very few of them know how to write and read” says Alga. “ They cannot go to school as those of their same age who have a family and live in refugee camps.
Without an education these children have no future. If they cannot go to school, we will build a school for them.
A simple home-school with a kitchen and two classrooms, carpentry and computers, the two most required professions in the area of Kassala”. Materials for the construction, a generator, a water tank are all required. Just as little as that, all needed is 50.000 euro.
The construction will be done by the boys of the camp. All else has already been found by Alga: the land, the surveyor who will make the project, the teachers. Some donators have already assured a photocopy machine and computers.
Amongst the millions of African refugees and homeless, there are those who live in daily terror, those who risk loosing their lives (or loose it) trying to cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean – undergoing unimaginable sufferings – and reaching the European coasts, those who live the life of a refugee chronically, since years.
Well, the Eritrean refugees sum up to all these conditions.
And it is difficult to imagine a worse reality than that lived by those who have escaped to Sudan: a fragile hut in the desert, and nothing more. No water, no hospitality, no help from international agencies. Among these half a million desperate, that have escaped from the cruelest African dictatorships of the moment, is a lonely group of children and adolescents.
They range from 8 to 16 years of age, orphans, or “not accompanied” – according to the definition of the United Nations – that for diverse reasons find themselves at North-East of the Sudanese town of Kassala, on the borders of Eritrea.
Poor amongst the poor
Alganesh Fessaha, exponent of the Eritrean opposition who lives in Italy, has found them on indications of a Capuchin, friar Ghebray, the only one who, with poor means, tries to take care of them. Alga, preferred to Alganesh, other than taking forth the political activity for the democratization of Eritrea, is busy looking after, with every means possible, the million and a half countrymen escaped from her country.
Through the Capse (Centre of assistance to Eritrean refugees in Sudan, chaired by friar Marino Hailè, also Capuchin), she brings forth the long distance adoption of children and adolescents abandoned to themselves.
And has decided that something can be done: a school and an infrastructure that allows them to live a life just a little less harder.
“Very few of them know how to write and read” says Alga. “ They cannot go to school as those of their same age who have a family and live in refugee camps.
Without an education these children have no future. If they cannot go to school, we will build a school for them.
A simple home-school with a kitchen and two classrooms, carpentry and computers, the two most required professions in the area of Kassala”. Materials for the construction, a generator, a water tank are all required. Just as little as that, all needed is 50.000 euro.
The construction will be done by the boys of the camp. All else has already been found by Alga: the land, the surveyor who will make the project, the teachers. Some donators have already assured a photocopy machine and computers.