The Kiryandongo Settlement Camp in Uganda is a place where thousands of Southern Sudanese have found refuge. Some ASERELA members resided in Kiryandongo prior to coming to Portland, and many of our family members remain there.

Although the United Nations initially supported the camp with donations offood and medicines, no relief organizations now provide general assistance. The plots of land given to the refugees rare too small to provide food the families and needed income to pay school fees and to purchase food and medicines. Working in consultation with the families in the camp, ASERELA decided that our first project would be the building of a kindergarten. Education provides hope for the families. Because people need jobs so desparately, we hired refugees to build the school. The building is now complete. We have hired women from the local sewing collective to make the much desired uniforms for the children. We have built a water pump on the school site to alleviate the daily struggle for water faced by the women of the camp. Women in the camp have organized themselves into groups in hopes of developing income-generating projects. Their major hurdles are lack of local markets for their goods and no access to small amounts of start-up money. ASERELA wants to assist the women in improving community health and developing income-producing projects.