Starting your own business is risky at the best of times, but when you’re doing so in a refugee camp in a desert, the heat is most certainly on!

Towards the end of 2011 we shared with you our plans to increasingly hand over control of the education of Darfuri children living in camps of Chad to their parents.

Eight years after the camps were set up as temporary homes for over 250,000 people, understandably, the community are keen to take back control of their lives, and with decreasing international aid funding there are few other options. Alongside ‘oil pressing’ businesses, one in each camp, each of the 23 Parents’ Associations are now in the process of
setting up small businesses to support the cost of education.

To help develop the skills required to do this, parents have recently received intensive business training. So far 134 people from 23 Parents Associations have been trained in how to structure businesses and set targets, carry out market research and feasibility studies,accounting skills and problem solving. All
crucial when you’re self-employed!

Small business training and coaching has been so well received that at a weeklong training programme in Bredjing camp,ten extra Parent Committee members arrived with notebooks and pens on the second day hoping to join in, having heard
about it from others overnight.

Since receiving training, the parents havecome up with ideas for start-up businesses such as shops selling food, books and stationery, restaurants, welding and sewing workshops and even cinema clubs.

They are now putting their training into practice by completing ‘feasibility studies’ for their first choice business idea. Based on the results they will decide whether to
take it forward as a business or choose another, more viable, idea.

Zakharia, President of the Education Committee, stated: “We must carry ourselves. We cannot be ungrateful of the humanitarian assistance
we continue to receive, despite its decline. Aid workers and donors have done a lot. Our duty is to maintain and sustain their work, which is now ours. We are getting
ready to take over.

“Already this year, literacy teaching has not been funded. Given its importance in the community, we decided to continue the activity. Teachers give themselves,
body and soul, to help their colleagues without any pay.”

The hope is to train the other 100 Parents’ Association members over the next three to six months. The businesses aim to fund school costs such as building maintenance
fees, classroom equipment, teachers’ supplies, students’ notebooks and pens when needed, and, if possible, textbooks.

Cord’s Senior Capacity Development Advisor, Sarah Gerein said “This training shows an approach that resonates with many people – equipping individuals
and groups with skills, knowledge and ways of problem-solving that enables self-sufficiency. Because of the training, parents have more of the tools they need to
run their small enterprises successfully for the future of their children’s education.”

Cord staff will continue to coach the Parents’ Associations and encourage them to share their learning with each other along the journey to self-sufficiency.

£15 could bring mentoring and support from a business advisor to a parent keen to support their children’s education. Give now.