Adding value, changing narratives
In South Africa, refugees with disabilities are innovating to advance their own protection, empowerment, and integration.
In a light-filled house in Johannesburg — a tree out front, by the security gate, and a garage out back; just a regular house, really, nothing so remarkable about it — a roomful of people are concentrating intently on what an instructor is saying. He’s holding up a phone. “See, these lines appear on the screen and then …” In the corner of the room, cardboard boxes contain more phones: broken, dusty. But, with the skills these keen-eyed participants are acquiring, those dead devices will be brought to life.
Something remarkable is happening inside this ordinary house, a kind of alchemy: two wires reconnected to spark a screen alight, the replacement of that old part with this new one, lifting off a shell to see the hitch in the mechanism below. It’s a technical process, yes. But the house is also home to a transformative social project: one that seeks to ensure refugees with disabilities are recognized as valued and equal members of society. This right, enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), is still more aspiration than reality in many contexts around the world.
Redeeming Hope for the Disabled is an organization run by refugees with disabilities, for refugees with disabilities, in South Africa. Its leaders have lived experience of the complex challenges faced by this community, which contends with xenophobia, ableism, and troubling superstitions about the meaning and status of a differently abled body or mind.
Their current project — supported through UNHCR’s Refugee-led Innovation Fund — is training members of the community in cellphone and computer repair, to ensure they have the skills they need to become trusted service providers in their neighborhoods.
Godel Sefu, the founder of Redeeming Hope, fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo after experiencing political persecution due to his reportage. On his arrival in South Africa, he had a scary encounter with xenophobic violence that he was lucky to survive. He started the Disabled Refugees Project, which became Redeeming Hope, to ensure people like him could pursue protection, empowerment, and integration on their own terms.
Technology repair shops are uncommon in the Johannesburg neighborhoods the participants live in; the current trainings therefore open up promising business opportunities without threatening to aggravate social tensions. They have been in such high demand that the size of the cohorts has been expanded, to accommodate additional participants.
During Disability Pride Month, celebrated each July, we spoke with Godel about the experiences that led him to form Redeeming Hope for the Disabled, the mission and values of the organization, and the project they’re implementing in partnership with UNHCR. Godel, who trained to be a Catholic priest, is a powerful orator. The thoughts he shared are edited for brevity and organized by topic below.
The origins of Redeeming Hope: ‘We need to be able to protect ourselves’
I arrived here in South Africa in early 2007. The situation wasn’t really good for us refugees; there were all these tensions. The year after that, I came to experience xenophobia. These guys wanted to throw petrol bombs at a house I was in; it belonged to a Zimbabwean lady who was married to a Congolese man. So, everyone left that house but I couldn’t save myself. I was in a wheelchair. There were stairs. There was no way. At the very last minute the police appeared before these guys threw the bomb. They saved me and took me to the police station.
It’s from this experience that I started thinking about other people with disabilities. About other disabled people in South Africa who might be in the very same situation as me — who maybe even are attacked or killed and aren’t counted because they are foreigners with disabilities. Then I came up with this idea of protection. We need to be able to protect ourselves because no one else will do it. I thought of creating a place for safety. The Johannesburg Property Company gave me a house and I transformed it into a shelter, so people with disabilities can come there and get safety.
The organization’s mission: ‘We protect, we empower, we integrate’
I realized that when people come to the shelter, it is important that they start learning something. I got a couple of sewing machines, and my partner, she’s very good at beading work. She started teaching them, so that when they leave the shelter, wherever they go, they can use those skills for their own survival. At Redeeming Hope for the Disabled, we do three main things: we protect, we empower, and we integrate.
We need to be empowered not only to know the Convention but also to apply it — making sure that we challenge the views that see people with disabilities as charitable cases. We need to challenge those views. People won’t do it for us. We need to do it ourselves. How do we do that? It’s through working hard and proving to the face of the world that: ‘Listen, this is us. We are disabled. But this is what we can offer you. This is what we can do to contribute to our communities.’ You see? This is empowerment.
Being the change: ‘Nothing about us without us’
We have organizations out there, working for people with disabilities. But we never saw successful integration into society. Why? Because they are thinking for disabled people. They are doing things for disabled people. And that is wrong, because only when we ourselves can take the lead in everything that is about us, then we will start to see something of integration. When we are contributing meaningfully into society, then integration starts happening.
We used to be given a fish and we couldn’t survive, because we’d eat for a day. But now, through the Refugee-led Innovation Fund, we are given an opportunity to learn how to fish for ourselves and survive. We said: ‘OK, what is the best we can do in this age of technology?’ If we can empower our fellow disabled people to fix phones, for example, to fix computers, when they go back to their communities, they will be valued for the services they will be offering. We won’t seek for integration, it will happen — BOOM — automatically. Why? Because integration is about adding value to the community.
Training the trainers: ‘A life-changing experience’
This project is all about empowering people so they can go back to their neighborhoods and empower other people in their communities, by passing on the skills they learned. Our 30 participants had to be chosen from different communities, and we made sure two or three were also from the South African community. We are training the trainers, so they can continue the work.
We have 24 people already completing the training and, frankly, it’s really a life changing experience. Just to see the transformation, just to see the happiness. Some of the people, they started already making a little bit of money from these skills. But one challenge we’re having is a huge one: we need tools to help these people to go out there and get jobs, start shops for themselves, and start training other people in the community.
But the trainings are having a big positive impact. On ourselves also, as disabled leaders of the organization. The way we see it, we are clearing misconceptions, we are challenging those views that see us as un-able. Now, we see in ourselves that there is that confidence that we can do it, we have done it, we are doing it.
The work ahead: ‘We need to get people integrated’
What we’ve achieved so far, if I can rate it in terms of percentage, is 20% of the 100%. Because the 80% should be the integration. That’s the main thing. We need to get people integrated into communities.
We can offer these skills, but we need to ensure participants can start doing the work, start getting valued by their communities because of the service they’re offering, start becoming the entrepreneurs we need. If we can get these people to the point where they can do their own job, where they don’t enter into any competition that could add to tensions, then we will have reached 100%.
UNHCR, through the Refugee-led Innovation Fund, works closely with refugee-led organizations like Redeeming Hope for the Disabled to ensure they can access effective guidance and resources to maximize the impact of their innovative ideas in their communities, for lasting positive change.
If you’re interested in this project, or would like to help it to reach its full potential via in-kind or financial support, get in touch at innovationfund@unhcr.org.
