For decades, refugees from around northern Africa have fled to Egypt to escape horrors like persecution, rape and genocide, yet they find that life in their new home is still a struggle. Finding safe, fair employment can be almost impossible.
For Sudanese refugees, the situation is particularly dire. 75% of the Sudanese refugee community in Cairo is trying to survive on less than $1 a day. Finding a proper job, with fair conditions and a decent wage, is almost impossible.
Almost 30 years ago, a small group of displaced Sudanese people in Cairo were battling this same problem, so they started a little workshop to make some means of living.
They began with beadwork and printing t-shirts with simple stencils. After a while, they introduced basket weaving. They named the project “Tukul”, which means “small hut”.
Today an established social enterprise, Tukul produces and exports a large range of beautiful, vibrant products that reflect the style of the refugees’ home nations. Global Handicrafts sells several of the Tukul range, including their gorgeous tea towels, perfect for your Fair Trade kitchen!
“It was not that they did not have the food needed for a healthy diet,” one NGO staff member told us, “but that they did not know how to go about it.” After running seminars on food and nutrition (left), they saw the women eagerly learn what kinds of proteins and vegetables would give their children a balanced, healthy diet. Now, families in these Cameroonian villages grow beans and smoke fish to eat with their plantains and grind peanuts into paste for a nutritious, protein rich food, even growing enough to sell at market. It’s basic knowledge that has revolutionised the health of the community, meaning less sickness, fewer children dying early, and women better empowered to take care of their families.
When we buy products from Gogo Olive (and many others) for our Global Handicrafts store, Crossroads not only pays the ‘fair trade’ minimum. We pay an additional sum which the women use to invest back into their community and families. The Gogo Olive ‘grannies’ told us they had recently bought eyeglasses for some of their workers with this ‘premium’ payment. It was a joy to see photos of the proud faces of these middle-aged craftswomen wearing their new glasses, for some the first glasses they had owned.
For some, life deals multiple blows, often in ways we find unimaginable. It is good, though, to stop, every now and again, to try. Mr Yang, a Hong Kong man in his 40’s, spent his life in a wheelchair. Couple that with desperate poverty and the picture is heartbreaking. This man, who cannot stand or walk unaided could afford no furniture in his home. He had been clambering out of his chair, each night, to sleep on the cold, hard tiles of his tiny apartment. He has had no bed and no mattress. He lives alone, and his disabilities make it hard for him to find a job, depending entirely on government support. It can be, at times, a lonely existence.
