Who We Are

We Are United in Our Dedication to Refugee’s Rights

Umoja Refugee Group started as

A small group of Burundian Refugees who were new in the city of Nairobi from 2015. The purpose of the group was helping one another in times of need, either for happiness or in sad moments. This is to mention physical support, emotional and material.
As time went on, the group grew to an extent of a big community of mixed refugees. Through local government advice and council, the founders decided to register the group as a community based organization to be able to serve the community efficiently.

Our mission is to provide activities in order to curb the effects of poverty and non-awareness by means of self-reliance classes. Enable people to stand up and become active in terms of producing by creative ways and put resources enough to keep up their families. Appeal up on people to rise and put about information that directly address the dangers related to long life and cycling poverty and its effects on the generations to come. Encourage and promote self-reliance activities in various ways through partnership and collaborations to improve people’s way of life and for the better future of the next generations. Reinforcing the harmony within the refugees’ community, by building strong integration bridges with host community.

Partnering to build a better world

UMOJA REFUGEE GROUP is a registered, non-profit refugee-led organization (RLO) that is uplifting/changing lives of the less privileged refugees’ families and vulnerable local hosts in urban setup, Nairobi.

Governance structure

Umoja Refugee Group's governance structure includes A board of management led by a chairperson Operations ‘team(staff) led by An executive director Women take up to 60% of the roles in the management and executive.

Partnering to build a better world

Governance structure

Our Inspirations

We believe that “refugee issues cannot be sufficiently resolved without the inclusion of refugees at the decision-making table”. and this is possible through empowering RLOs to implement community projects as the direct impacting stakeholders on the ground.

Areas of focus

URC takes its focus on empowering refugee women, children, elderlies and the differently abled persons by applying Self-reliance- based programs, by promoting mental health care and education.

We also takes action in advocacy by promoting, striving to address and speak out for equal access to oopportunities to better lives of the most marginalized and less privileged persons.

Play

Our Mission

To uplift the needy for sustainable self-reliance

Our Goal

To instill in everyone’s mind-set to maintain a good practice of self-reliance standards for families ‘sustainability via procreative activities and skills development

Our Vision

Building a self-empowered community through the power of harmony and creative optimism

Our Journey

In years

The CBO has been supporting more than 500 needy families from different localities of Nairobi for containing and overcoming corona virus’ effects. The said families were supported with consistent foodstuffs stock, sanitizers, and masks for 13 months from February of 2020. This has been possible due to our workforce teamwork. Thanks to our partners: Local Government, AMETIS and SHAMAS RUGBY FOUNDATION, and other stakeholders. During the same period counselling program was initiated and around 32 individuals, 8 families, 6 couples, and 2 general groups were served in our counselling program. Under Talent & mentorship Program, training in tailoring, sewing, making detergents, training in cinematography (photography, videography, editing, TV-production), and dramatology program/film making were initiated and they are impacting and transforming lives.

We emphasized on mobilizing resources to rebuild a broken society after coronavirus raged everything. We were able to initiate our holistic approach which entails the need of linking the Mental health care to livelihood issues, for attaining self-dependence. Projects like Inuka Dada tujiendeleze, which aims to restore refugee women’s social prestige in the community; Digital innovative skills and technology came as a relief to many refugee youth which enabled them to access training and mentorship. 84 clients were reached under counseling, 12 were trained in cinematography and 54 were assisted under welfare and social assistance.

We impacted 249 direct beneficiaries, and more than 5800 indirect beneficiaries via our online programs. Of the 249, 235 were women (94.5%) and 14 were male (6.5%). Among direct beneficiaries, around 80% were Refugees, and 20% were Kenyans. For the indirect beneficiaries, we reached both refugees and Kenyans in the community. We were able to contact around 40 interviewees during the storytelling project with UR stories Among those, 90% are composed of youth under 35 years. As per the target we had in our plan for 2022, we were able to make it up to 90%.

OUR RESPONSE TO COVID-19

Apart from providing supportive packages consisting of food, masks, sanitizers, and other sanitary items, we have been working hand in hand with sensitization efforts regarding virus spread methods by printing precautionary measures advised by the Ministry of Health and sharing them with families who may not have access to direct daily updates on the symptoms and effects of the virus. This effort has been extended to social media to enable them to reach and save as many people as possible.

FUTURE PLANS

In the future, UR CBO plans to put a full health care program and a health facility to curb health issues within refugees. At the same time, the cbo wishes to put full education support for kids from less privileged families and a school. It is our wish to later put up a multi-services center hosting all our services in diversity of its kind.