Help & Hope for the Women of Darfur
The women of Darfur are not safe. The women of Darfur are raped. Some women are killed. Others are taken hostage. They need your help, which is why I wanted to tell you about an Independent Appeal for the women of Darfur this Christmas.
In a touching and compelling article written by Cahal Milmo in El Fashir, Darfur we read the following:
The women walk quickly in single file across the pale sand, their stark orange and purple shawls flapping in the hot wind. Frequently, they look over their shoulders and then towards a distant tree line. It is mid-morning and the daily wood- gathering run in Abu Shouk refugee camp, a rolling mass of straw shacks and polythene-sheet shelters that is home to 50,000 people, has started for its women.
If they are lucky, these graceful figures disappearing into the shimmering horizon of the sub-Saharan Sahel will return from their three-hour trip bearing on their heads a meagre crop of twigs and tree roots to provide a day's cooking fuel.
If they aren't lucky a lot of horrendous things happen to these precious ones. The solution...
With that 60p, as part of The Independent's Christmas Appeal, each woman can be taught to use an ingenious stove that cuts the fuel used by two-thirds, and with it the need to make the perilous journey into the scrubland.
... "If we have no wood, then there is no fire. If there is no fire, then there is no food for our children or husbands. It is terrible to go out looking for wood, you think all the time about what might be waiting. But now at least we don't need to go out so much any more. Now we have something that offers safety."
The "safety" in question comes in the shape of an object which at first glance looks like a car tyre fashioned from clay. This new type of stove dramatically reduces the amount of fuel consumed while cooking food and thus the need to seek wood - a chore which has become a lottery of sexual violence.
Please help, find out more by visiting here. And thank you for loving these women. If you don't...who will?