Shipment feedback:

Benin, bordered by Togo and Nigeria in West Africa, is rich in natural beauty but is one of the world’s poorest nations. Many of the country’s 11.5 million people still lack access to basic social services and are dependent upon subsistence farming.

“We have been able to open two new branches, thanks to the computers and office equipment you sent.” ~NGO staff

Crossroads sent a shipment of goods to help partners who empower women and youth with skills and support that will lift them out of poverty. “The problems are numerous,” they said. “Women’s illiteracy, extreme poverty, girls dropping out of school or never attending, a lack of access to IT, malnutrition and a severe lack of resources in general.”

“This donated fridge has enabled our co-op of 40 women to improve our activities in fruit juice production, increase our income and improve our working conditions.”

~Small businesswoman, rural Benin

Their training projects target all these problems strategically, and goods from Crossroads are helping them do it.  Examples of the impact include:

• Equipping three computer centres with computers and IT equipment. “These are a great blessing for young people and school students. Youth now have access to the internet and do research for their own knowledge or for presentations requested by their teachers.”
• Refrigerators and freezers have helped 300 young people who are starting food businesses, such as fruit juice and cake-making. “Many girls and women who had nothing now have equipment for their businesses, like refrigerators to carry out income-generating activities for the preparation of cakes, ice, fruit juices and other local drinks that can be refrigerated and sold. This gives them very encouraging returns!”
• Furniture and office goods for their own administration. “Our NGO is now very well-equipped and operates without any material difficulties,” they said.
• Distribution of new clothing, mattresses, school supplies and other desperately needed basic goods for 5,000 of the poorest of the poor in their communities.

Computers from the shipment allowed our partners to open two new office branches, as well as equip three computer centres to give IT access to community youth.

Our partners’ vocational training projects in industries like fruit juice production and baking (above) help hundreds of young women find independence and able to support their families. Refrigerators and freezers from Crossroads’ shipment (some pictured below) have now helped 300 young people in starting their own fruit juice and cakemaking businesses.

NGO staff oversee the arrival of the shipment in mid-2020, ready to start unloading and distributing the goods to their various projects with women and youth.

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Shipment feedback:

Recent conflicts in some parts of Cameroon in recent years have not only caused devastating loss of life and trauma but have also brought essential services to halt, like education and healthcare. Our partners on this shipment work with communities and families that have been forced to flee their homes to live in the bush, after seeing their houses burnt and their loved ones killed.

They assist these displaced families with school and vocational training opportunities and providing homes for orphaned children. Crossroads has supported this work with several shipments across the past decade, and this most recent shipment was a further investment in both urgent, short-term needs and longer-term needs, with goods like clothing, computers, school equipment, toys and recreational equipment.

“After receiving this shipment, we have seen lives changed and lives saved.”
NGO Staff

Our partners estimate that 2,000 people were directly impacted by the shipment:

• They were able to re-open their vocational training school with 40 students currently enrolled, after having been closed since 2013.
• The hospital beds, computers and some other household furniture saved them many thousands of dollars.
• The community local clinic was equipped with hospital beds, office chairs and some computers from the shipment that will benefit thousands of patients.
• Goods equipped a nursery and primary school with enough tables and chairs to accommodate 1,000 students

This shipment was truly strategic in restarting several projects that were suffering from a chronic lack of resources. Now, with these projects running again, they can support thousands of people displaced by the civil war.

Above: Crossroads’ volunteers loading the container in Hong Kong.

School furniture and school supplies are restarting education for children displaced by Cameroon’s devastating conflict. Many have been orphaned, and public schools have suffered extended closures because of the violence.

Beds and mattresses helped equip clinics and care homes.

Above: Goods from the shipment made it possible to reopen the vocational training, giving local youth a chance to gain experience and skills for better employment.

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Shipment feedback:

Youth unemployment is a serious problem in the Northern region of Tanzania where much of the population rely on subsistence farming. Without specialised skills, many young people are stuck in the cycle of poverty, and sadly often turn to drug dealing or petty crime to get ahead.

Our partners in northern Tanzania have been working towards breaking that cycle of poverty through educational and training programmes. They estimate that their programmes reach been about 3,000 children and youth from around the local area, with activities ranging from extra reading classes to computer literacy, sports, dressmaking, and welding classes. This shipment included goods to equip and expand their projects like school supplies, computers, electrical goods, recreational equipment, projectors and more.

“At our own expense, it would take us more than ten years to achieve all this, but with the help of Crossroads and your supporters, it has become easier for us to achieve our goals”. NGO director

Goods from the shipment have invested in a variety of ways, including:

• Projectors from the shipment made it possible to set up bigger classrooms that can accommodate more students.
• Fabric from the shipment is helping teen mothers learn tailoring skills at our partners’ vocational training centre.
• Stationery and educational equipment from the shipment, has boosted school attendance as schools no longer lack sufficient furniture and supplies.
• Computers are giving IT access to young people who previously had no access to computers at all, helping bridge the digital divide.

“Most of our children did not have desks when they were in class; they used to sit on the floor. Now they sit at desks and are doing well with studies!”

Above: Projectors and other electrical equipment from Crossroads’ shipment help these local youth attend training in vocational skills. Goods from the shipment supported specific job training like dressmaking, which has helped youth set up their own businesses, earning enough to support entire families and in turn, lifting the economic level of the community. Nine teen mothers were directly enabled to start their own businesses in part because of goods from the shipment that supported their training.

Computers (above) and other goods are helping our partners administer projects to support youth in moving towards economic independence.

More feedback pictures: 

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Shipment Feedback:

Moldova is one of Europe’s poorest nations, and for people who live with disabilities, or who are elderly and poor, suffering can be intense. Poverty is especially desperate in rural areas, and there are thousands of elderly or people with disabilities living alone, extremely vulnerable.

Crossroads shipped to an NGO who works to support these communities in particular, ensuring they can access healthcare, medical equipment, and necessities like clothing, food and household goods. Our shipment included medical supplies, stationery, appliances, and clothing, impacting an estimated 6,000 people.

“It was invaluable humanitarian aid for disabled people and all people in need”. NGO director

Some of the shipment’s significant impact included:

• Distribution of computers to people from low-income families and those with disabilities.
• Books that reached more than 4,000 people
• Stationery and clothing for children and families living in poverty.
• Goods to support a catering class, which allowed them to increase their capacity for enrolment.
• Equipping a psychiatric hospital and office spaces with new furniture and supplies
• Masks distributed to elderly and others as part of Covid-19 prevention projects

We are hugely grateful to all who contributed to make this shipment possible. Thank you for caring for some of Moldova’s most vulnerable. See next page for further photos of impact.

Goods from the shipment, such as bedding, mattresses, clothing and more, helped support elderly in the community desperate for support.

Above: Computers from the shipment are now helping children with disabilities, low-income families and others access the internet, stay connected and keep up with education online.

Books from the shipment reached more than 4,000 people eager for reading materials in English.

Wheelchairs and other medical equipment are supporting people with disabilities in poverty, many of whom are living alone and under-resourced in rural areas.

More feedbacks pictures:

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Shipment Feedback:

Despite Sierra Leone’s civil war ending in the early 2000’s, the ripple effects are still felt through under-resourced health care, education and employment opportunities, especially in the rural areas. Our partners on this shipment work with local communities to address poverty through a variety of projects in job training skills, education, child abuse prevention, helping those with disabilities, and women’s empowerment. Goods from this shipment helped them not only serve thousands of people with clothing, shoes, school supplies, furniture and medical goods, but to equip their own administration offices, raising their profile significantly in the area and improving the level of service they can provide.

“Honestly, I don’t know how to start but thank you for this support. This has given me life once again. I shall forever remain grateful to you all”.  Wheelchair recipient

The shipment made an incredible impact on the community. Here are just a few examples:

• More than 300 people with disabilities received crutches, wheelchairs, clothing, shoes, bags and other items.   

• Nearly 1,000 students received new clothing, helping support with the basic needs that often prevent children from staying in school.

• Computers and furniture from Crossroads made it possible to open a new computer and ICT training centre. This centre will welcome people from surrounding communities, and also serves as a research base for students at the various universities. The centre can enrol 2,500 students in a year.

Above and below: For thousands who were born with disabilities, been injured or lost limbs in the war, it is very difficult to sustain themselves and their families. Medical and hospital equipment from the shipment helped hundreds of people with disabilities.

Above and below: School supplies, books, school furniture, stationery and bags made a significant investment into the lives of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially girl students, who are at higher risk of dropping out of school.

Staff speak of the impact:

“A huge number of children used to walk to school barefoot, and wear rags as clothing. These were huge barriers in our work, because we could see the needs ourselves but couldn’t act, due to a lack of the resources to do so. Now, after the shipment, children don’t walk to school barefoot anymore. They have been given clothing and shoes.”

“Children in these community schools no longer sit on the floor to write and now they have bags to put all their school materials in to go to school.

“The beneficiaries were super excited about these goods and the impact it has created in their lives.”

“This shipment has promoted our organisation to another level. It has given the organisation and its staff a new facelift. We can now feel very proud of having office furniture in our offices, office equipment like a safe, projectors, stationery and so on.”

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Feedback: Helping refugees and indigenous communities

“I sometimes dream of going back to my own state when the situation gets better, only if there were no more killings, no persecution, no displacement, and only if I could live like other ethnic groups there.”~25 year old Rohingya refugee woman in Malaysia

It has been several years since hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fled in terror from Myanmar.  Escaping violence, rape, killing and destruction of their homes, many of them are now living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Some, though, have made their home in Malaysia, and are struggling to regroup and rebuild their lives.

Crossroads sent a shipment to Malaysia, where our partners work closely with some of these refugee communities, as well as some other vulnerable indigenous groups. The situation they described since Covid-19 was grim. “Because of the pandemic, they’ve been jobless for a year,” they said. “Nobody is supporting them. They first appealed for basic food. But then we discovered they don’t have any hygiene products or enough clothes.”

When Crossroads’ shipment arrived, it included goods to support more than 4,000 families like:

• Clothing
• Face masks and thermometers for Covid-prevention
• Shoes
• Computers, school furniture and school supplies

The computers and school goods have enabled them to set up a learning centre for the refugee community, saving them USD10,000 that they might otherwise have needed to raise to establish the centre.

The shipment also brought goods to give joy to some of the children in these communities. “It’s easy to think that ‘aid to the needy’ comes in the form of food,” said staff. “But to the healthy growth of a child, education and fun are not secondary needs. These books, stationery, kids’ scooters, and brand new clothes came all the way from Hong Kong and they put a smile of the faces of these children.”

Malaysia itself has had an incredibly challenging time during Covid-19, with long lockdowns that cause devastating unemployment, and a death toll that is rising once again. For those communities who are already very poor and vulnerable, such as the Rohingya, the need for help is all the more urgent. We’re so glad to support the work of our partners there reaching out in practical care and compassion.

Volunteers load the shipment for Malaysia at Crossroads Village, Hong Kong.

Above and below: Crossroads’ partners and beneficiaries with donated goods traveling by boat to help indigenous communities in need.

“It’s easy to think that ‘aid to the needy’ comes in the form of food,” said staff. “But to the healthy growth of a child, education and fun are not secondary needs. These books, stationery, kids’ scooters, and brand-new clothes put a smile of the faces of these children.”

Families facing long Covid lockdowns and school closures are grateful to be part of our partners’ ‘One Family, One Desktop’ scheme, distributing desktop computers from Crossroads’ shipment to children from low-income families. They also used computers from our shipment to set up learning centres for refugee communities (below).

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