Featured Region: Darfur

The Darfur Basket – Enterprise within a Refugee Camp

A collaborative initiative in partnership with our nonprofit partner, Darfur Peace & Development Organization, highlighting the spirit of enterprise as a path to healing.

BACKGROUND

Darfur is located in western Sudan and home to 6.5 million people .Today it is a region of the world that is captive to an earth-scorching campaign that is increasingly being referred to as a “genocide” with thousands of villages being decimated, forcing three million people from their land, and causing the death of at least 400,000 civilians.

In the midst of this humanitarian crisis, many women in rural Darfur have lost family members, their homes, all their personal possessions, and their livelihoods as the result of militia attacks on their villages. Some have endured four to five years in “temporary” shelters in under-supplied camps for displaced people. Many have become the heads of their remaining households. And many have suffered multiple rapes. Epidemic sexual violence against Darfuri women and girls has created one of the most serious human rights and women’s health crises in the world today.

This is why our partner, Darfur Peace & Development Organization, launched The Darfur Women’s Center at Kassab Camp, one of the largest camps in Western Darfur and home to 23,000 people – a population larger than the town it surrounds. The Women’s Center offers a secure place for the women to gather and receive supportive services and programs to recover their personal strength and develop resources to rebuild productive lives. One of these programs is the Darfur Basket Weaving Initiative (link to Darfur Peace Basket) launched in 2008.

Engaging women in enterprise helps appease the sense of boredom and desolation that a woman sitting idle in a refugee camp will inevitably experience. If she is able to engage in creative enterprise and earn a dignified livelihood over and above the meager humanitarian rations she receives, she begins to feel a sense of hope and security – in spite of her challenging circumstances. She knows that through her resilience and resourcefulness she can help feed her family and provide for their basic needs.

Today, 70 skilled weavers at Kassab Camp have come together to weave these stunning traditional Darfuri baskets. Since we began the initiative, 1600 baskets have been produced by the women for the international market. The women are paid well for each high quality basket they produce – a price that is well above what they would receive were they to sell the baskets in the local market. Once the baskets are produced, they are then packaged and shipped out of the camps and across the desert to Khartoum – where they are placed on a commercial flight bound for the United States. Due to the success of the initiative, and the women’s enthusiasm to grow it, there are now plans to expand it to a neighboring IDP camp at Abu Souk.

The Darfur Baskets are a testament to the power of enterprise through women’s hands – as a force for peace.

Purchase the Darfur Peace Basket and Darfur Basket of Strength

For more information about our partner please visit: www.darfurpeace.org

Photos: Courtesy Susan Burgess-Lent, Darfur Peace & Development Organization