A place to call home for Durban refugees
The Refugee Social Services has become a second home for migrant women seeking a place of refuge and safety.
Over a decade ago, Jane Mweidi and her husband abruptly took their two children and set off on a one month quest from Congo to South Africa.
When Mweidi reached SA and later Durban, with nothing but the clothes of her back, she was taken in by the Refugee Social Services (RSS).
“The first thing they asked me was if I need to go back to school again and which work I know how to do,” said Mweidi.
“I told them I needed English classes and that I knew how to sew but I needed more teaching.”
Mweidi is now a fluent English speaker and has a sewing business that keeps a roof over her family’s head and pays her children’s school fees.
Mweidi’s story is one of many examples that speak to the influence of RSS, a non-profit organisation based on Diakonia Avenue.
RSS deals mostly with women asylum seekers, documented and undocumented migrants.
According to a United Nations report, at least one in five refugees or displaced women are estimated to have experienced sexual violence and 60 per cent of preventable maternal deaths take place in humanitarian settings.
Women asylum seekers are disproportionately at risk compared to men and that is what RSS is trying to address.
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Tamasha Maliti, a community development worker at RSS said the main tenet of the organisation is to build a safe and supportive structure for migrant women.
“It has taken a long time to cultivate this space. We are working with people going through different kinds of trauma, forced migrants who had to flee their homes and we are asking them to trust us,” she said. “It’s a very organic process of building trust within the groups, so that the ladies are comfortable with each other and us.”
RSS is also big on self-determination and affords the women they work with chances to make money and support themselves.
In 2014, they started a sewing project with some of the appropriately skilled women where they would design and sell their products at markets.
The women are paid in advance, regardless of whether their product sells or not.
With the Coronavirus pandemic and government restrictions on movement, business has been slower than usual and a change in business strategy was required.
Mweidi recently received an order to sew 1000 masks.
“I am not used to sitting down and not doing anything. I usually sew my own stuff and sell them at the Sunday market but with the Coronavirus now, we all have to stay home,” said Mweidi.
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At the time of going to press, the contents of this feature mirrored South Africa’s lockdown regulations.
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