World Renew Receives Match for Rohingya Response

Late in July, World Renew reached its goal to raise $50,000 to provide community kitchens as well as health, nutrition, and sanitation training for Rohingya families who fled Myanmar over the past year and have arrived at the Jamtoli refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh.

The funds will be matched one-to-one by a Seattle-based nonprofit, One Day’s Wages, making $100,000 available for the project.

Founded in 2009 by Seattle-area pastor Eugene Cho, One Day’s Wages seeks to have people donate a portion of their wages, as Cho and his family have, to help fund relief efforts around the world.

“We don’t have to be rock stars, millionaires, or on Hollywood’s A-list to make a difference in the world. We just need to do our part,” writes Cho in the Huffington Post.

“My family and I live in Seattle,” he says. “My wife and I fell in love and married in 1997 and have three young children. We’re neither rich nor poor; simply a middle-class family with privilege because we know that we have so many opportunities that many in the world do not have. The numbers surrounding extreme poverty are staggering. . . . It shouldn’t be this way and doesn’t have to be this way.”

World Renew and One Day’s Wages are collaborating as part of a larger action that began at a roll-out event called “Stand with Refugees” at Quest Church in Seattle on June 16, 2018.

Participants attended to stand in solidarity with not only Rohingya ethnic peoples but also refugees fleeing violence in Syria and South Sudan.

Since August 2017, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar because of ethnic and religious violence. Those who made it to Jamtoli camp now live in makeshift tents and other temporary structures.

As of February 2018, Jamtoli was home to 48,700 refugees. It has been challenging for camp residents to find resources for daily calorie and cooking needs. They also struggle to find fuel to cook, so they resort to deforesting nearby stands of trees.

In addition to limited access to food, living conditions in Jamtoli are cramped, risking the spread of illnesses such as cholera, dysentery, and typhoid. Many families have fled extreme circumstances and are traumatized by the loss of loved ones as well as their assets, livelihood, and security.

Through donations and the One Day’s Wages matching funds, World Renew will provide 10 community kitchens at Jamtoli that include ongoing support for cooking daily meals, nutrition training, and hygiene and sanitation sessions — and a safe space for women to gather and support each other.

In addition to these materials and training, World Renew will also provide individual stoves to 225 households and offer health, nutrition, water, sanitation, and hygiene sensitization training to 500 additional households.

The health training and cooking equipment supplied by World Renew’s Bangladesh partners will provide vulnerable women and children with more support, increased safety, and better health practices.

For many years, World Renew has walked alongside some of the world’s most vulnerable refugees fleeing conflict in areas such as Myanmar, Syria, and Sudan.

In this successful fundraising partnership with One Day’s Wages, World Renew is reaching hundreds more displaced Rohingya families with vital food and health assistance.

To find out more about World Renew’s work in international disaster response, visit https://worldrenew.net/idr.