Refugee Pastoral Care: Helping Refugees in the Durban Area

Our aim is to provide a world class pastoral and social services to refugees , asylum seekers and migrants with a view to restore their lost dignity, faith and hope, by involving them in the healing workshops, social cohesion programs and also ensure that justice prevails in all matters affecting them, through lobbying and advocacy.

Project objectives and activities:

1. Provision of temporary shelter to new arrivals Our project receives many new refugees especially from the great lakes region of Africa who need to be sheltered. We provide them with shelter while they settle. While in the shelter, we provide them with, at least, one meal a day.

2. Assisting refugees and asylum seekers with payment of school fees for their children in primary and secondary schools. Beginning of every year we give each student registered with us, two school uniforms. We also pay a subsidy of their school fees depending on how much grant we receive.

3. Caring for the sick refugees and migrants through the provision of basic medicines.

4. Caring for the orphaned refugee children through their legal foster parents.

5. Assisting with fees for kindergarten children.

6. Teaching IsiZulu (Local language) and English, to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants for integration purposes.

7. Running Healing workshops (with refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and locals). The purpose of these workshops is to afford individuals opportunities to talk about what they went through and also to help both locals and foreign nationals to understand each other’s situation, culture and problems and to fight xenophobia.

8. Responding to emergencies and disasters, example xenophobic violence.

9. Help asylum seekers understand processes at the Department of Home Affairs so as to legalize their stay in the country.

10. Skills training to ensure self-reliance.

11. Advocacy for refugees’ and migrants’ rights. Project outcome

The major outcome is having a shelter devoted to our refugee, asylum seeker and migrant brothers and sisters. We badly need a permanent shelter for the project.The project intends to assist new comers have space to stay while they put themselves together. It is a challenge for refugees to settle in South Africa given the fact that there are no camps. However the absence of camps is not a bad thing in the whole setting but it is a necessity at the beginning when these people are just arriving. Over the years the Refugee Pastoral Care has been sending refugees and asylum seekers to the shelter which we do not own rendering it very expensive. The Xenophobic crisis saw the Refugee Pastoral Care spending more than R400’000.00 in 54 days. in light of this we then thought we should have a shelter of own.

The project will see vulnerable refugee groups being cared for while they look for avenues to care for themselves. It will also enable us to monitor and do needs assessments for people who will be in our care. Where cases require counselling the facility will be ideal for that. We are planning to run healing worksghops in the facility as the space looks appropriate.

Through provision of shelter we are able to restore in the refugees and asylum seekers, the lost dignity and faith. We hope that will also assist us in preparing them for integration. They will view other people without suspicion.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Durban Refugee Pastoral Care is a commission of the archdiocese responsible for handling all matters affecting all foreign nationals in the area of the archdiocese and beyond. The project was started in 1999 and gained momentum in 2002 when it was allocated a full time chaplain. The project belongs to the Archdiocese of Durban and is one of its commisions.

The project has vast exprience in handling migration issues. firstly we provide shelter and food to new arrivals and ensure they are properly documented. the shelter we use is not ours hence the cost is high( we plan to fundraise for a buliding which we will use as shelter for our vulnerable refugee brothers and ssiters). Since 2002 the project has professionally handled cases amounting to over 22 000. We are in collaboration with a number of networks that are also players in the sectors. We have had two major crises with xenophobic orientation where we partook to host victims. In 2008 we had 580 victims in our care from the 21st May to 31 August. During the period we were able to provide shelter, food (in meal form), clothes, blankets and sanitary ware. We drew up a reintegration program as well as repatriation both of which happened without an incident. We ran healing workshops to ensure the spiritual aspect was catered for. We had another intervetion in 2015, when we had 190 victims in our care after they were displaced during the xenophobic crisis. Trauma and healing sessions were conducted with the victims. They were provided withn necessities throughout their stay in our care. A reintegration program was designed which saw all of them being absorbed in communities. Reintegration packs were arraned for each family that was in our care.

Over the years we run healing workshops which are an important component of our pastoral work. The healing workshops are a lifesaving program has that seen many people overcoming their trauma.

We will keep our backers in our prayers and will always inform them of the progress of the project. Of course this may sound abstract but that is what we can do as a church organisation.

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We will keep all backers in our prayers and we will always inform them of the proigress of the project. Of course that may sound abstract but that is what we can do as a church organisation.