Empowering Women and Changing Lives in Darfur, Sudan

Since 2003, millions of men, women, and children have been displaced in the Darfur region of Sudan due to an on-going conflict that has claimed the lives of thousands.

Today, more than 2.5 million people are living in crowded camps scattered across arid desert areas, one of the most hostile environments in the world. Natural resources are dangerously scarce and the responsibility to collect fuel wood and drinking water usually falls to the women in the camps. As a result, many women and children spend up to seven hours a day gathering wood and water from farther and farther away, imposing great risk upon themselves as they have to leave the relative safety of the camps.

Since 2004, CHF has been working in the Darfur region managing more than 20 different activities designed to help give vulnerable women more control over their lives and their futures. Operating around the community centers CHF is establishing in the camps, one of these projects is producing and distributing stoves that allowing the women to use 70% less fuelwood to cook the same amount of food—thereby reducing the number of trips that need to be made, as well as increasing household savings.

Overall, these projects are:

• giving displaced women the ability to earn and save much-needed income;
• saving vulnerable women time and money that they don’t have to spend on collecting scarce firewood from outside the camps; and
• giving women a voice in their households by empowering them to better advocate for themselves.