“When you work with youth, you need first to put yourself in their skin. We have a lot of work to do, but we’re doing it.”
Cubaka is the President of the Youth Center in Oruchinga Refugee Settlement. He’s stepped up to lead a group of young people in Oruchinga who are looking to make a change.
“We have very many challenges here,” he says. “But our main challenge is finding ways to be together.” Peaceful and productive things to bond over and work on isn’t always easy when there are 13 different nationalities living in one camp. But, says Cubaka, “we say that there is no Congolese, to Rwandese, no Burundians, and no nationals. We’re all the same at the youth center.”
The center is a place to gather, to share ideas, to find purpose and meaning. And sometimes, the best time to get together is in the evening, providing something for young people to do at night. But there’s one problem – getting around in the dark.
Since most of Oruchinga isn’t connected to a power grid, getting to and from the youth center at night can be pretty dangerous. It gets dark early, and there aren’t a lot of reliable and sustainable tools to help illuminate the way. So our solution? Solar headlamps, of course!
For the past week we’ve been exploring how just a little access to light can have outsized impact on people’s lives in a refugee camp. And for young people at the Oruchinga youth center, this couldn’t be more true. Thanks to The Shine on Project, dozens of young people there now have their very own Watts of Love headlamp!
“These lamps will really help all the youth in big ways,” says Cubaka. “They will use it to come to the center, but also other things. For young people, sometimes they just need a lending hand like this to change their future…you never know what could happen because of it.”
