When refugees leave their homes, they often don’t have much time – if any – to prepare. They run with just the clothes on their back, not knowing exactly where they’ll end up. Or where their next meal will come from.
“When I ran, I had only this one piece of clothing,” said one young boy to Hildah, ARC’s Protection Manager in Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement. “And that was one child with a mother,” Hildah said. “The children who come without mothers and fathers, it is the neighbor who comes to us and says, ‘You see this one child? She is alone. She doesn’t even have clothes to wear.’”
Clothes are not hard to find in Uganda – unless you’re a newly arrived refugee in Bidi Bidi. And it’s especially hard for those children who reach Bidi Bidi completely alone, as hundreds of them have.
One of our jobs in Bidi Bidi is to place these kids with foster families – but foster families are refugees themselves. They often have a difficult time providing the extra support that the child might need. That’s why a second set of clothes can do so much to ease their burden and helps the family as a whole as they take in a new member.
So Hildah and the team decided to do the doable. They bought a bundle of clothes, and they set out to find children who needed them.
The team met kids in groups and individually with their foster families, each time matching them to the right sizes, finding the best fit for each.
It may seem small, but imagine having one set of clothes. What will you wear in the middle of the desert when those clothes need to be washed? What happens when a shirt or pants become too worn to wear? A second set is a game changer.
This small gesture can make all the difference to these families and to the child who needs a little extra support. It might make their day – and their transition to life at Bidi Bidi – just a bit easier.
So much of our work in Uganda is done by volunteers, who often come from the surrounding villages and who have financial struggles of their own. So tomorrow, we’ll go back to ways we can help them in doing the amazing work they do every day. Stay tuned!
