NEW YORK CITY, New York — Darfur is often one of the most forgotten parts of Sudan. Situated on the western side of the country, sparsely populated, and features an arid desert that eventually merges with the Libyan desert. The state in many ways is vastly different from the major cities that are a few hours away. It is one of the country’s most impoverished regions that has dealt with decades of immense violence and yet is often forgotten about in light of the civil war in Sudan.
Kids for Kids
Yet, there has been one organization in particular that has worked to help the people in Darfur even before the civil war which began in April 2023. Kids for Kids is a non-profit organization that Patricia Parker OBE formed in 2001 after having visited the region with no intention to start a foundation but just to see her son who was working as a diplomat at the embassy in Darfur. The organization turns international aid on its head as it creates sustainable projects that help impoverished families in the region and has found ways to navigate sending aid in a country torn by civil war.
When the civil war began, delivering aid to Sudan was challenging for any organization. Only one aid convoy was sent to Khartoum in December 2024. Kids for Kids, in particular, could not be in direct communication with their villages for several months and had to find different ways to support the villages.
“So in terms of the war, we had to make sure that our volunteers and their families were safe. And with the collapse of the banking system in Sudan we have had to be creative. Without money, we cannot do anything. So we reached out to an organization called Cashi,” said Davina Patel, deputy CEO of Kids for Kids, in an interview with The Borgen Project.
Situation in Darfur
According to a report from the Center For Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Camp ZamZam located in northern Darfur in the city of El Fasher needs at least 100 aid trucks alone to feed the 450,000 people sheltered in the city. However, within the last four months, only about 300 aid trucks have crossed the Chad – Sudan border, hardly enough for a nation of 50 million. Further highlighting the difficulty of aid to enter the country and that the amount of aid delivered is not proportional to the amount of people in need of it.
It has only been in the last six to eight months that Kids for Kids has been able to send aid and be able to help its villages. The chaos of the war has made it hard for the organization to reach many of the 110 villages it has adopted. However, despite the lack of communication and uncertainty that war brings, many of the villages adopted were still able to survive due to the sustainable projects.
Kids for Kids Projects in Darfur
Kids for Kids has multiple sustainable projects, its longest-running sustainable project is its Goat Loans project in which the organization loans five goats to a family for two years. This provides the family with the beneficial nutrients that come from milk. During the two years, the flock typically grows to 14-27 animals in the family can benefit from selling the flock’s milk and yogurt. After two years a family loans five of its flock (usually healthy newborns) to another family to benefit from this program.
Some other sustainable projects include training 40 midwives every season, building kindergartens and planting trees around the villages.
“The beauty of Kids for Kids is that our sustainable projects, once in place, provide water and protein-rich milk. We have midwives who are there looking after children and mothers. Our First Aiders are providing health care, and our villages have now become the most stable in Darfur.” Patel also added that their villages have become attractive to IDPs “We have 35 IDPs in one of our villages, which we were able to support with basic items,” Patel said.
Funding
Kids for Kids is unique because it operates by the motto “We believe in helping people help themselves.” By providing sustainable projects they have been able to turn the villages they have adopted into the most stable villages in Darfur. Kids for Kids operates through donations and is not government-funded. In 2012 the organization opened its own office in El Fasher in North Darfur, where the program manager and project officer who are native to Darfur work directly with villagers to implement the projects. There is also a team of volunteers in Darfur consisting of village leaders who have formed the Kids for Kids Steering Committee.
Patel believes that having local volunteers embedded in the organization’s work is what has helped the villages stay afloat during the war, “ I think that, given our model, because what we do is we work with communities. We work with village leaders to tell us what they need. We have kind of turned international aid onto its head, and we work with the villagers and they tell us, rather than we dictate what they need.”
The Need for International Aid
The villages in northern Darfur are at an advantage in comparison to the rest of Sudan in light of President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on USAID. Millions of Sudanese people have relied on USAID and now will have to look elsewhere for food despite the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) confirming famine in 10 locations in Sudan and that another 17 are on the brink of famine. Kids for Kids is vocal about getting the global community interested in Sudan and believes this cut of aid could be detrimental to Sudanese people and the organizations on the ground in Sudan.
“There was a period of uncertainty.” Patel said referring to when the organization first heard about the cuts “But, we have been able to support some of our villages, so the USAID cuts have not affected us, but I can imagine how detrimental it has been to other organizations.”
Organizations like Kids for Kids Darfur bring up the question of how international aid should look. However, for them, one thing remains clear in regard to the first steps in helping countries like Sudan, “My first advice would be to get a bit of understanding about the situation through an organization like Kids for Kids. If someone did want to help, I would say, find organizations like Kids for Kids.”
– Aya Diab
Aya is based in New York City, NY, USA and focuses on Global Health and Politics for The Borgen Project.
Photo: Flickr