Anne Figge from the Five Talents global programs team and group members Amande and Zola and Rachel Lindley, UK office co-CEO, in South Sudan last month.
Friend,
Today marks World Refugee Day, and we are reminded of how important your support is for rebuilding lives and promoting peace.
Our colleagues Anne and Rachel just visited communities in South Sudan, where Five Talents Savings Groups include people who recently fled the war in Sudan. Their stories speak to their tenacity and the role Savings Groups play in supporting refugees, returnees and internally displaced people:
Amande said she fled to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, in 2016 when there was conflict in South Sudan. She returned to South Sudan in 2023 because of the war in Sudan.
“We came empty handed but found people here in Five Talents Savings Groups. I joined a group and then started a business. Now it is easier to get food. Before we had to wait for the U.N. - it was hard, you have to wait a long time. My friends and my group enabled me to reach where I am.”
“I went to Khartoum in 2012,” said Zola. “We lived near the military center where war broke out in April 2023. I was shot. My family put me on a chair on a donkey and we fled back here to South Sudan. A month later, I heard my husband had been killed in Sudan and my last born sister too. I was traumatized.”
“The Savings Group came and spoke to me and gave me a loan, even though I was not a member. My old house is still here, but the money they lent me bought grass so I could rethatch it. I joined the Group and took a loan to start a groundnut business. In Sudan I had a restaurant and it’s my dream to revive it here. I will take a loan and use the share out (of my savings at the end of the year) for that. Even when I was sad and depressed, the group’s encouragement and support has kept me going. It’s not just about the money. God is here.”
Your gift today in honor of World Refugee Day will support our ongoing programs in South Sudan and eight other countries.
Thank you for helping the most vulnerable meet the challenges of trauma and displacement with resilience and hope.
