Help Disaster Affected People Rebuild Their Lives

When displaced people return to their homes, they face a huge challenge to rebuild their lives. African Relief Fund (ARF) assists returnees through Income Generation Projects. By gaining a livelihood, people can start becoming independent again and working to improve life standards for themselves and their families.

Conflict, extreme weather conditions, or natural disasters – there are numerous reasons why people may lose, or be forced to flee their homes. But no matter what the causes or circumstances, most displaced people will return to their homeland if they can. Unfortunately, what they return to is often even worse than the situation that forced them to leave in the first place.

With their homes destroyed and their livelihoods lost, it’s difficult to start all over again with nothing. At ARF, we give them the means to begin again through our Income Generation Projects. Launched in Somalia, in 2012, we’ve empowered hundreds of people with skills and an opportunity to help them start over.

For only £150, you can donate and sewing machine including start-up raw materials.

How We Work

Through income generation projects, ARF works to build individual capacity and independence to bolster community resilience. With a little bit of help, the people we enable become financially independent. The more people we support in this way, means the less reliant people are on unsustainable handouts and charity organisations.

ARF has a two-pronged approach:

We provide skills training and equipment that people can use to provide a service to others, and through which they can earn.
We provide stock or equipment on loan to assist subsistence farmers with farming projects, so they can increase their capacity and farm yields to boost their incomes.

£50 can buy two chickens which can enable someone to start a small poultry farm.

Skills Training for Women in Need

ARF’s Income Generation Programme prioritises women, because widows and very poor women with small children are often more committed than men to making the best of the opportunities we provide. They are eager to learn and start earning, as soon as possible, so that they can feed and clothe their families. The skills and tools we empower them with helps to build their confidence and gives them dignity through financial independence.

Our seamstress training project equips needy women in rural villages of Somalia with sewing skills. Once their training is complete, we provide the women with sewing machines and the raw materials they need to start working from home. This is a great advantage for women with small children, who can’t find anyone who will care for them while they work. In this way, women are able to earn a living, while minding their families.

Assisting Subsistence Farmers

ARF works to empower small farmers by providing them with start-up materials and farming equipment to improve their productivity and yield.

We loan farmers tractors, allowing them to sow or plough their fields in a fraction of the time and without having to rely on other members of the family. Farmers become more productive and their children, who don’t have to help in the fields during planting/harvesting season, are able to go to school.

We donate chickens to farming families, along with the necessary skills and equipment to start up a poultry farm. As their brood grows, so does their income through the sale of eggs and chickens.

£100 will provide 10 young people with skills training for a month.

We Need Your Help

At ARF, we believe in the proverb, ‘Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish and he will eat every day.’ That is why we focus on building independent individuals and resilient communities through our skills development programmes. Can you help us help people become financially independent and fend for themselves?

£150 will buy a trained seamstress a sewing machine and start-up raw materials
£50 will buy two chickens to start a poultry farm
£100 will provide 10 young people with skills training for a month
£10 will allow us to loan out a tractor to a needy farmer for an hour

‘…Allah helps the servant as long as he helps his brother…’ (Muslim, 2699)

How many hours of tractor time can you buy? Can you empower 10 women or young people by helping them acquire new skills? With your Zakat, Sadaqah or Lillah we can give needy people the means to rebuild their lives.

£10 will allow a needy farmer to loan a tractor for an hour.

Thank you from Balanbale (Galgadud region, Somalia)

The Galgadud region of Somalia, faces diminishing resources and pastoral land, due to extreme weather conditions and swarms of locusts. It is also rife with settlements for internally displaced people, who’ve had to flee from conflict or the impacts of climate change.

In Balanbale, ARF has been helping affected people through income generation projects. To date we’ve provided sewing skills training to 30 needy women. Once they’d completed their training, the women were equipped with sewing machines and everything they needed to start up their own tailoring businesses. Today, these women produce school uniforms for the children of Balanbale. They’re able to earn an income and support their families with dignity.