Rebuilding lives with dignity - vocational training helping Sudanese refugees in Egypt
A brutal civil war has driven you from your home with little more than the clothes on your back. You’ve witnessed horrors that still play out again and again in your mind. You’ve lost your husband, the breadwinner of the family.
Now you’re alone, in a foreign land and have to find a way to feed your children…
This is the reality for many of the thousands of Sudanese refugees who’ve fled to Egypt in recent years.
Christian-led initiative ‘Impact’ runs training courses for refugees and those from marginalised Egyptian communities to gain the qualifications they need to find work.* Your donations have funded a sewing course for 100 women.
Sewing training
Training covers professional garment-making skills, from pattern making to finishing techniques.
One of the first things the women are taught to make are reusable menstrual pads. These not only provide the perfect practice for basic sewing techniques but are cheap and easy to make, helping them tackle period poverty in their communities.
The course students learn how to safely use the different machines needed in the textile trade – including the overlocker and the orle machines.
At the end of the course, the women receive a certificate of qualification. Impact also collaborates with sewing factories and workshops to identify job vacancies and help graduates secure employment.
Psychological support and ongoing mentoring
The programme is about far more than employment. It helps people recover from trauma, build supportive relationships and regain hope for the future.
As the Impact team explains:
“Impact’s heart is that while migrants grieve their losses, they may encounter new life, hope, and healing through Christ… Our mission is to build bridges of lasting hope by serving refugees and vulnerable communities enabling them to use their God-given skills and resources to rebuild their lives with dignity and purpose.”
“Impact’s heart is that while migrants grieve their losses, they may encounter new life, hope, and healing through Christ”
Psychological support sessions are offered alongside the training, concentrating on life skills, emotional resilience and (for the Christian participants) Bible study.
Business management and financial literacy training are also included, helping the more entrepreneurially minded to start their own small businesses. Ongoing mentoring helps graduates to form cooperative groups to share production and resources, building new communities and support networks.
Lives of dignity and opportunity
Jamie, Embrace’s CEO, visited the Impact team earlier this year:
“It was a real encouragement to meet the team who lead Impact and visit their modern and really inviting centre hidden away on a Cairo main street. To be part of something that is far more than a handout, treating Sudanese refugees with real dignity and giving them the possibility of employment in a thriving local business, or setting up a small enterprise of their own, is something we’re really proud to be part of.”
Jamie Eyre, CEO, Embrace the Middle East
Embrace’s CEO, Jamie (second left), visiting the Impact team’s sewing workshops.
Impact is only three years old, but it is already more than living up to its name!
Thank you to all who have generously given donations so far this year, helping us to continue to support projects like this. As the Impact team put it:
“With your partnership, we can continue building bridges of dignity, faith, and opportunity — one life at a time.”
*Impact was set up in 2023 and their training courses now include textiles skills, home appliance maintenance, mobile phone repair and hospitality. Funding for the sewing course is the first time Embrace has supported Impact’s programme. It’s the first fruits of an exciting partnership that we hope will continue to grow and flourish.
Will you help more refugees rebuild their lives with dignity?
Your gift can provide practical skills training, emotional support and pathways to employment for families forced to flee their homes.
