REFUNITE Outreach Volunteer, Pascal, writes about his interaction with Esther, a REFUNITE user from Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.
Every day, REFUNITE’s Outreach Volunteers in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, spend their time helping families register and search on the REFUNITE platform. In addition, they do their best to keep up hope among those searching. Since many refugees have lost contact with their loved ones, sometimes for over 20 years, it can be hard to believe that they will ever speak to their loved ones again. Here is what one of our Congolese volunteers, Pascal, learned from a conversation with Esther, also from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), whose optimism about one day finding her loved ones is nothing short of inspiring.
The Voice of A REFUNITE User
by Pascal Zigashane
“My move towards greater happiness and everlasting joy is inspired by REFUNITE” says Esther Neema Esther, one of our beneficiaries in Kakuma Refugee Camp. She fled her home country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Kakuma Refugee Camp in 2009, due to her life being threatened back home. Along her journey to Kakuma, she lost some of her closest family members that she has since never had help tracing. Esther said that she lost her paternal uncle and her younger sister in 2004 when her life was in danger due to tribe conflict in the DRC, which political leaders failed to control. Her uncle and sister fled to Tanzania, but Esther stayed behind until finally leaving in 2009.
Esther started her search on the REFUNITE platform via the USSD service in between February and March of last year, 2015, after she was told by her elder sister that the organization helps people search and reconnect with loved ones. She declared to me that REFUNITE gives her hope of finding her missing uncle and younger sister. Seeing more and more names on the platform every time she searches for her missing loved ones encourages her, because this means new people are constantly joining the platform. “Whenever I search for my loved ones, the REFUNITE platform provides more results similar to what I was searching for” she said. This makes her feel like the chances of her eventually reconnecting with her own loved ones increases. Despite how long it might take, Esther still keeps up hope that if her missing uncle and sister are not yet dead, she will one day find them.
With a happy smile, she said that she is motivated every day by other in her community that she knows well, who have successfully reconnected with their relatives through REFUNITE, even with people who were believed to have died long ago back home. Esther added that much of her motivation to keep searching stems from the Outreach Volunteers who are always ready to help her use the platform. According to Esther, one of the key features of the platform is that it is accessible via any kind of mobile, which she feels is something any schooled person can certainly grow familiar with. The Outreach Volunteers help others in the camp register onto the platform and guide them through the whole process, from searching all the way to being reconnected.
She felt confident admitting that she often receives messages via the platform from different people that she doesn’t know. She hopes that, any minute, she may read a message from one of her missing loved ones.
She expressed her wishes and expectations of seeing REFUNITE grow each single moment and make hopeless refugees and famlies’ faces shine with hope of finding their loved ones. For her, becoming a billionaire without knowing where her loved ones are is equal to having zero money in her bank account.
This post was written by Pascal Zigashane, with an introduction from Lotta Relander.
