PROJECT ROHINGYA

The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar. The latest exodus began on 25 August 2017, when violence broke out in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, driving more than 742,000 to seek refuge in Bangladesh. Most arrived in the first three months of the crisis. An estimated 12,000 reached Bangladesh during the first half of 2018. The vast majority reaching Bangladesh are women and children, and more than 40 percent are under age 12. Many others are elderly people requiring additional aid and protection. They have nothing and need everything. Without access to electricity, the communities in the refugee camp zone will continue to suffer from increased vulnerability to theft and violence. Solar power is unique in its ability to be brought into remote areas, to be pollution free, and to scale easily. Before the new solar installations, there were numerous times when a lack of power put women and children at risk. One example is during the recent monsoon season, when our midwives found themselves providing care in the dark after flooding brought power outages. They worked in the conditions they had to, but as you would imagine, they were quite concerned that in the dark they might make a mistake that could harm the mother or the baby. But, when a mother goes into labor, you can’t exactly tell a baby to wait for the lights to come back on. We are implementing projects to achieve livelihood goals for millions of Rohingya people and host community people, at the same time to provide lighting solutions free-of-cost. EcoVation Bangladesh partnered up with Dutch INGO ICCO Cooperation, in early 2020 we started a pilot project with them, training 250 host community youths. The project was really impactful, those trainees are now running their own micro-enterprise on making solar lamps & selling them to the refugee camp with seed capital support from ICCO. EcoVation is now partnering up with UN Organizations like WFP, IOM, UN Women & UNHCR to run large scale programs to provide solar lamps & streetlights in the camp area and host community. All the lights are made under the program where Rohingyas & host community youths including females. They are lighting up WASH facilities, bamboo bridge area, shelters, and walkways in the camps and cyclone shelters in the host community. Apart from the risk & safety issues faced by Rohingya, there are other issues like lack of livelihood opportunities. Now they are dependent on humanitarian organizations’ financial aid. But gradually the international donor funding is shrinking, so they need to be self-reliant. Not only them, because of the extreme Rohingya influx, local people in the part of Bangladesh started losing jobs. Here EcoVation Bangladesh’s SolarPreneur intervention is bringing positive impact.