Padou Foundation
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“Padou Foundation was created to support efforts such as the ones exhibited by the young foster mothers. The Foundation strives to provide grass root support and promote self-sufficiency through education, peer support and micro loans for income-generating activities.”
The Central African Republic’s (CAR), a landlocked but natural-resources-rich country of 5.7 million people, has been thrusted into a humanitarian crisis since a political coup erupted there in March 2013. Since then the social situation continues to worsen even though the world has largely ignored it.
Since the beginning of the conflict, over 2 million people have fled the country while about 700,000 remain internally displaced. Schools, churches and entire villages have been burned down, material possessions looted and carried abroad, leaving survivors with limited to no resources to rebuild from. The UN is urging neighboring countries to refrain from repatriating Central African refugees due to the precarious situation of the country.
Today only 68% of the population have access to a source of drinking water in the capital city, Bangui. The situation is worse in rural areas. Even so, major hospitals in Bangui routinely experience water shortages lasting for days at a time.
International organizations report that in 2018 two-thirds of the population were in need of humanitarian assistance and yet, with the schools, hospitals and places of worship increasingly under violent attack from militias, the places where people can go to for protection, support or medical attention become fewer and fewer every day.
Education
Peer Support
Micro Loans for İncome-Generating
Self Sufficiency
In 2018, UNICEF estimated that at least 1.5 million children younger than 5 years old were at high risk for malnutrition. That same year the UN declared the CAR as the most dangerous country in the world when it comes to hunger and food insecurity.
Many young women who have escaped the violence now turn around and are taking upon themselves to ‘adopt’ orphans and abandoned children in their neighborhood. These foster mothers are trying as best as they can to provide even just a few meals per week for the children that they have collected.
Padou Foundation was created to support efforts such as the ones exhibited by the young foster mothers. The Foundation strives to provide grass root support and promote self-sufficiency through education, peer support and micro loans for income-generating activities.
An initial focus group discussion with community gatekeepers identified a few areas where the target groups are ready to engage in productive activities that will allow them to provide food for their families while raising funds to launch the next group of beneficiaries. These areas are: community health clinic, barber-braiding-beauty shop, and cyber café.