Dadaab Refugee Camp in the Northeastern province of Kenya is in the middle of a number of crisis. Drought, famine, and violence have brought a huge number of Somalis and other refugees into the camp. The youth are being actively recruited as Islamic militants and many have few options but to join. We have devised a solution. We will be empowering the youth for positive change and give them opportunities for education and self employment through our DadaabNet project.
Dadaab Refugee Camp was built for 90,000 people. It now holds more than 360,000 and there are 5,000 new arrivals every week. The refugees are given food and water by international aid agencies, but are in desperate need of hope for a future. We can to reach as many of them as possible before they give up and join Al Shabaab, Arabic for "the boys". Every day they are being recruited and we are short on time. We want to give these youth hope and opportunities for a peaceful future.
Voices of Africa will provide training, skills, and most importantly hope to the youth refugees in Dadaab. We will provide education, employment, and even self employment support with partner agencies. We plan to work in all three camps as well as the local Dadaab community also in great need. We need to act fast as they are slipping away and once they are armed it will be too late. DadaabNet will required trained youth to use the network to reach out to others who want a future.
The long term impact will be there will be more hope, more opportunities, and more skills among the youth in Dadaab. We need to engage as many as possible. We cannot say we will end terrorism, but we can do our best to give them the lifeline they need to survive. We will be training a minimum of 50-100 youths per month after we set up the system and basecamp. Therefore we could reach 1,200 per year at a minimum! If each of those youth help refer 5 additional youth that is more than 10,000 youth!
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
