by Linda Macqueen

Sixteen-year-old Jurez Musafiri looks into the camera and says, ‘I’ve been there; I know how it feels. Five years ago I was there myself.’

He explains how, when he was five years old, his family fled for their lives from the Republic of Congo, with the bloody civil war at their heels. They lived in a Ugandan refugee camp until they were resettled in Australia five years ago.

Seeing the images of people suffering in the Dadaab refugee camp brings back awful memories of the hunger and despair Jurez felt in the camp.

‘We were a big family, and so the food ran out quickly’, he tells the camera. ‘It [Dadaab] relates to me … This is my motivation. It’s what pushes me to do something to help.’

The YouTube video Jurez and other St Paul’s Shepparton (Vic) youth group members made that day is called ‘Feed Dadaab’. It’s part of the group’s fundraising campaign to support Australian Lutheran World Service’s (ALWS) East Africa Famine Appeal. They’ve also run sausage sizzles outside the local IGA supermarket, hosted a pancake day in the church grounds, and are selling yellow wristbands for $3 each.

Why wristbands, and why yellow? In Dadaab, new arrivals are issued with a yellow wristband. This entitles them to 21 days of food — just enough to survive — while they are being assessed. The St Paul’s young people wanted the wristbands to be a visual point of connection with the people struggling to survive in Dadaab. As little as $3 provides 27 lifesaving meals for children in the camp.

So far they have raised $2600.

The youth group members — whose birthplaces are Congo, Burundi, South Sudan and Australia — together with their indomitable (and exhausted!) pastor Matt Anker, have developed an excellent relationship with local media. Four stories about their Feed Dadaab campaign have featured in Shepparton News, and they’ve also been interviewed on the local ABC radio station.

That day listeners were entertained with two songs by the St Paul's Lutheran Choir and also heard about Pastor Anker’s visit to Africa last year with ALWS. He spent a week travelling in Sudan and two weeks in the Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps, both of which are administered by the Lutheran World Federation on behalf of the United Nations.

‘Dadaab was the harshest place I’ve ever been’, he said on-air. ‘It’s literally in the middle of the desert, nothing grows there, and it’s incredibly hot. Most people are living under plastic sheets or in tents.’ He explained that the camp had originally been built as a refuge for 90,000 people, but there are now over 500,000 people crammed in there, and around 1500 people are still arriving every day.

‘On top of that, since it’s only 50 kilometres from the Somalian border, there’s also the security issue’, Pastor Anker said. It’s a dangerous place to be.

In recent months, attacks on Kenya by Somalian-based militia have increased, including bomb and grenade attacks on areas frequented by westerners in Nairobi. Disturbingly, aid workers are also being targeted. Two Medecins Sans Frontieres workers have been kidnapped from within Dadaab itself, and a few weeks ago a UNHCR vehicle was blown up by a remote device.

‘The sheer contrast between the refugee camps and what we have here in Australia is overwhelming’, Pastor Anker said during the radio interview. ‘After visiting places like that, you’re grateful for what you have ... for peace and for the prospect of survival.

‘In world terms, you realise what a small and privileged group we are … that we can take peace and safety for granted.’

And that’s the message the young people of St Paul's are taking into the public places of Shepparton — and well beyond, too, through their YouTube video. They’re trying to help Australians, most of whom have never even imagined the trauma of being a refugee, let alone lived through it, to understand how blessed we are — and to respond with gratitude and generosity.

Sarah Paul, 18, remembers the day she and her mother and siblings arrived at a Ugandan refugee camp, having fled from the violence in Sudan. ‘They treat people differently when there is no man there, and it was hard for us’, she said to Shepparton News reporter Zach Hope. ‘When I’m happy and have a good life now, how can I enjoy myself when they [the people in refugee camps] are suffering? I asked myself, “How can I help?” But I don’t have any money. Then we thought of an idea to help raise money through the community.’

At a time when both church and young people are more likely to make news for all the wrong reasons, the St Paul's youth group is demonstrating how Christians can reverse that trend – by being a public witness to the love of God for the world.

Watch the Feed Dadaab YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QJYIAD4cIA or simply go to the YouTube site and type Feed Dadaab.

Donate to the Feed Dabaab campaign by emailing Pastor Matt Anker at feed.dadaab@gmail.com All donations will be forwarded to ALWS for its East Africa Famine Appeal.