Susan Sarandon (above, right) was recently on CNN honoring Rose Mapendo (above, left) a genocide survivor who became a hero working with Mapendo International to rescue thousands in Africa. Rose is the inspiration for the organization Mapendo International, founded by Sasha Chanoff in the United States and his partner Dr. Wagacha Burton in Kenya.

To date, Mapendo International has helped more than 2,000 refugees into the U.S. Resettlement Program and provided medical care to an additional 3,000 through the organization's health clinic in Kenya.

The following comes from The Tactics of Hope. For more personal stories like Sasha’s, visit us at www.TacticsofHope.org/resources:

As the grandson of Jewish refugees, Sasha’s identity is intertwined with his life’s work, Mapendo International, a world-leading innovator in strategies for refugee and refugee protection.  A lifeline for people displaced by conflict, Mapendo identifies and protects people fleeing war and violence whose lives are in imminent danger and who fall outside existing aid efforts.  Of the eight million refugees worldwide, Mapendo is devising strategies at scale to reach as many of the “forgotten ones” as it can possibly reach.

Excerpt of Sasha’s story from The Tactics of Hope:

“I remember walking into the tent for the first time, and seeing the hollow faces of refugees needing to be rescued.  There were so many people, many more than the 113 I was supposed to bring back.  My eyes were drawn to a woman, Rose Mapendo, holding two little bundles in her arms, twins that she had given birth to eight months earlier in a prison with no running water or doctors.  She had been imprisoned for sixteen months, and her twins weighed four pounds each at birth.  Huddled around Rose in this tent were seven other kids, gaunt-like stick figures orphaned during the war.  In the tent were thirty-two other women and children whose husbands and fathers had been executed already.   They had come to the protection center only five days before I had gotten there, and none of the thirty-two were on my list.”

Sasha Chanoff founded Mapendo International with Dr. John Wagacha Burton, a Kenyan doctor and sociologist at the University of Nairobi.  Named after the woman, Rose Mapendo, who had been saved during Chanoff’s rescue mission to the Congo after giving birth to twins in prison, Mapendo means “great love” in Swahili. The organization, which devises and implements short and long-term solutions for those like Rose whose struggle to survive would otherwise go attended, is innovative in its efforts to address and solve the chronically unmet needs of thousands of refugees.  As Sasha says of the organization’s approach, “We are out to help the forgotten ones.” 

Sasha at Mapendo offices.

Mapendo’s strongest tactic, in comparison to traditional international aid organizations, is its unique approach to building local capacity.  In countries that are stricken with poverty, endless funds seem to flow inefficiently into the refugee crises that maintain the status quo without reforming it.  Tens of millions of dollars a year are pumped into the refugee camps from the top-down, that is, from western organizations with big grant money that rolls over year by year in board director rooms lacking the domestic ground knowledge in the very countries in which they are giving aid.  With a fraction of the budget of most transnational organizations, Mapendo is nonetheless one of the top emerging refugee initiatives in the world, largely because of its approach to building local capacity.

To this end, more than half the people on the board of directors, as well as the co-founder, are African.  Mapendo links its operations to local and indigenous stewardship not only by hiring nationals in countries of operation, but also by exploring ways to build resources and provide training to fight poverty.   In their short-term operations, Mapendo identifies, saves, and keeps refugees alive through their rescue and health initiatives.  In its growth and strategic plan, it is adopting innovative strategies for long-term systemic transformation of the refugee and prisoner rights issues at large.  The short-term tactics focus on the immediate improvement of healthcare, security, and integration of refugees.  The long-term tactics focus on building a permanent infrastructure for refugee assimilation and integration.

•    In its first two and a half years of operation, with resettlement projects to the United States, Mapendo has rescued over 2,000 refugees and launched a rescue resettlement mission to resettle 600 Congolese refugee massacre survivors who are in imminent danger.
•    Mapendo has provided health assistance to 1,000 urban refugees without access to any care who live in the impoverished areas of Nairobi.
•    In the coming few years Mapendo plans to launch rescue resettlement efforts for tens of thousands of refugees across Africa, as well as provide health assistance to tens of thousands of other at-risk refugees living in urban centers.