“The Covid-19 pandemic is pushing Ukraine towards its worst recession in decades – possibly a depression – with devastating consequences for its most vulnerable people,” wrote a UN report in 2020. Ukraine was already one of the poorest countries in Europe. Now the situation is unspeakably hard. Global Hand partner Mission Without Borders was excited when a donor in the UK offered a massive quantity of PPE through our network: 26,000 face masks, 1,500 coveralls, and hundreds of nurses’ hats and medical shoe covers. They took the two truckloads of PPE to their projects in Ukraine and Romania, including soup kitchens, schools, childcare centres and community medical centres. “They are desperate for PPE,” they said. “Our staff and the recipients were very happy to receive the much-needed equipment, especially since the pandemic restrictions and safety measures are continuing, and demand a large volume of PPE every day.”

“I am tired of listening to gun shots and seeing lifeless bodies here and there. I just want to go where I can sleep with both eyes closed and be sure to get up alive.” – Emile, an 8-year-old child whose father was beheaded in Cameroon’s civil war.

The war in northwestern Cameroon has seen killings, kidnappings, villages burnt, and children recruited as soldiers. It has resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being displaced. In some areas, schools have been shut down for more than four years. Crossroads has been shipping to help projects in Cameroon for more than a decade. Since the war has intensified, though, we have needed to change our shipments to help displaced and traumatized people.

” Materials collected from the shipment were used to set up a shelter and study space for children rendered homeless or affected by the crisis,” said staff from one Cameroon shipment. “The goods from Crossroads have completed the kitchen, library, computer room, gym and toys for children…This centre has been earmarked by UNESCO and other humanitarian organisations as a safe space and learning space for children in 2020. Thus, children in that conflict-affected now have access to a safe learning space.”

Huge boxes of first aid supplies from the shipment provided materials to reactivate their primary healthcare project. 30 community health workers were equipped with medical supplies and dispatched to unreached health districts to give medical aid. Hundreds of villagers in these remote areas have already benefitted from treatments ranging from wound care, malaria management, safe childbirth attendance to women’s health education.

Crossroads has continued to ship to Cameroon throughout the Covid pandemic. We stand with deeply courageous partners helping people not only affected by the health crisis but also displaced by the devastating conflict. One is little Emile, quoted here. We hope that now, at last, he can sleep ‘with both eyes closed’ knowing that he will ‘wake up alive’.

Goods from Crossroads’ shipment made a precarious journey by truck, boat and motorbike to help refugees sheltering in a remote border village.

Syria’s lost childhoods

For young children in Syria, life equals war. “Every Syrian child has been impacted by violence, displacement, severed family ties and lack of access to vital services caused by massive physical devastation,” says the UNHCR. Experts say these children live under the kind of toxic stress that changes their brains at the deepest level.

Crossroads sent two shipments to partners in Syria who work with children and their families to build relationships, offer counselling and meet material needs. As well as essentials for families living in camps and temporary homes, such as sleeping bags and warm clothing, we included a massive number of brand-new toys, given to us by Hasbro and other donors. We are always advised that it is essential for children traumatised by war to play so they can learn how to ‘be children’.

Photos of these toys being distributed speak loudly. Staff regularly visit children in their homes, some in temporary tents, some in basic concrete dwellings, and they were thrilled to be bringing gifts from the shipment this time. They told us, “The kids were overjoyed to have their first toy in their hands: something that was simply for them to keep. The parents were excited and deeply grateful because they could never afford to buy their children any.”

Benin: The multiplier effect in action outside

Outside Benin’s bustling major cities, opportunity can be hard to come by. Take Moise, a young man in a remote village with a dream to open a community IT centre. His goal was for this to be a place where young people who’ve never touched a computer could access the Internet for the first time. [no new paragraph] He also wanted it to empower small business owners to print documents or use software they needed. The motivated Moise brought his dream to life, building a modest IT centre with a single computer. The outdated computer didn’t last long, though, and when it broke down, Moise was back to square one. He watched his some of his newly-won customers travel to another town to use services there. He watched others, who couldn’t afford to travel, simply lose their only access to the Internet because his computer was now useless.

“Young people now have access to the internet! Women who had nothing now have the equipment to start businesses.”

When we shipped goods to our partners in Benin, they used them as a capital investment for young people like Moise. They set Moise up again and are now walking with him in his small business goals. Moise said, “Thanks to this, the whole village now has access to the services of our centre. Young girls and boys are learning how to use computers!”

We’ve told Moise’s story to give a close-up picture. Zooming out, though, the entire shipment to Benin is itself a case-study of the multiplication effect we see when goods bring strategic change to communities in need.

• 34 computers from Crossroads’ shipment equipped three new computer centres, now open for business. 90 youth have undertaken internships to learn business and IT support skills at these computer centres and 20 people have been employed by them. 11,700 customers at the three centres each month can now access technology for work, school, research and office services.
• 20 refrigerators/freezers from Crossroads’ shipment supplied projects that train and employ young women in fruit juice production. Today, 300 women from poor backgrounds are employed through their programmes in juice production and sales, directly made possible by these refrigerators. In turn, their combined communities of 60,000 people have access to nutritious fruit juices, cakes and other food services offered by these enterprising women and their refrigerators.
• 74kgs of fabric and other goods supplied to our partners’ tailoring training school have doubled their capacity, increasing enrolment from 60 students to 120.
• Mattresses and bedding from the shipment quadrupled the capacity of their orphanage from 30 children to 120 children. 5,000 people from poverty-stricken homes were helped with brand new clothing and shoes. Bicycles were given to students who were previously walking many miles to school and at risk of dropping out. In total, the shipment included more than 11,000kg of donated goods, all telling stories of impact that go on and on.

The 2020-21 period was a challenging one for our international shipments, but we’re incredibly grateful for the volunteers, goods donors, shipping sponsors and financial donors who made it possible for us to ship where we could and continue that magical multiplying effect that poor communities need so desperately.

We often talk about the Crossroads equation, where donated items can multiply in the lives of many others. The Benin shipment is one more shipment that demonstrates it! That’s the reason we love this work, and your support of it!