Imagine for a moment that you’ve just moved to a brand new town. You don’t know your neighbors, or even the location of the closest grocery store. What would your first step be? Look it up online? How about the yellow pages?
In Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement, there’s no internet, yellow pages, or even a town crier – if you want to get to a food distribution, you simply have to be lucky enough hear about it from someone else. That’s the only way to get the news.
We run community centers at Bidi Bidi, which are meant to act as a hub for everyone who lives nearby. So we thought, what if we could make those community centers a place not only for people to gather, but to come for much-needed information? So for Day 90, we’re doing just that.
We put up information noticeboards, filled with useful information like the times for town meetings, food distributions, vaccination days at the local clinic, emergency phone numbers, and notices for opportunities like volunteer or paid positions. The ARC team wants to put up kid’s drawings, too, brightening up the space and making it feel just a little more like home.
“These boards will widen the information flow,” said Festo from the ARC team. “It will be accessed freely by anybody. Anytime a person wants to know something about what’s going on, “they can pass by here and know.”
In their small way, these notice boards are freeing. They provide a reliable flow of information for everyone who seeks it. With just some cork boards, some pins, and paper, we can provide a light to guide refugees as they navigate their new home.
