The Project Details

Community Driven Repatriation Association (CDRA)

Business Affairs

Mission Statement: The Business Affairs branch of the Community Driven Repatriation Association will pair with community leaders on the camp, to offer Congolese people culturally appropriate business skills that assist in the amelioration of their financial situation and in the creation of small market economies, which increase access to a wider variety of goods and services; all the while backing FORGE out of the structure to ensure sustainability of both the center and the knowledge by its participants.

Means of Achievement:
1) Economic Crash Course Workshop
2) Savings-led Micro Finance Courses
3) Business Development Training

Justification for Business Affairs Sub-Section of CDRA:
Sixty thousand Congolese refugees currently located in Zambia will be repatriated to the South-East Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) provinces of Moba and Pweto over the next two years. NGOs currently present on the ground report no security issues but severe lack of infrastructure including roads, schools, health facilities and housing. The UNHCR will support repatriates with food rations for three months following their strategic drop-off in or near their cities of origin. They will also provide initial necessities such as buckets, blankets, tarps, pickaxes, shovels and first aid kits according to funding availability and family size. The repatriates will be returning to neither housing nor developed areas and have been entirely dependent upon the UN for their existence for the past eight to ten years.
In order to allow the new communities a chance at survival, CDRA will implement three subsections on UNHCR Kala Camp, Zambia (population 25,000), all of which will control expectations and offer education and training to assist repatriates in the creation of reasonably healthy social infrastructures safeguarded against poverty. These three sections include Social Development Initiatives, Emotional and Mental Preparedness Techniques and Business Affairs Training.
The Business Affairs courses will give in depth training using self-perpetuating knowledge i.e. that which will not remain stagnant at the physical center of CDRA but will create a ripple effect so that all attendees can teach their communities within Kala Camp and the communities to which they will be repatriated the knowledge they have acquired. In this way, the cycle of sound applicable business practices will be spread outward as infectious transferable social change at the individual level. This section of the project was developed in response to research conducted by Operations Director, Diana Essex* in the summer of 2006 in the three refugee camps on which FORGE (Facilitating Opportunities for Refugee Growth and Empowerment) operates as an Operating Partner of the UNHCR: Kala, Mwange and Meheba. Given the ability to develop appropriate market economies and the knowledge to use savings-led micro finance to stabilize sound business endeavors, the Congolese repatriates feel that they will be capable of sustaining their communities in DRC.
*Research reports and meeting with Diana available upon request.

Economic Crash Course Workshop
The ECC Workshop is developed to give a general knowledge of economics as applicable to the refugee paradigm. It will serve as a foundation of knowledge from which participants can continue their studies. It will address basic ideas necessary for both the Savings-led Micro Finance courses and Business Development training. It will give a global economic perspective and relate that knowledge to sustainable community economics using culturally applicable examples and simple language absent of unnecessary jargon. It will also give note to the change in economic situation that will be experienced in the move from Zambia to DRC. It will emphasize the affect of international aid on African communities and dispel common economic fallacies while encouraging strong belief in the idea of self-sufficiency.

Savings-led Micro Finance Courses
SLMF will teach groups and individuals the importance of pooling financial resources in order to create a means by which budgetary short falls within the community can be satisfied. Upon completion of the course they will have an understanding of how SLMF can work both on the refugee camp and how they can take the knowledge back to DRC to assist in the development of healthy market economies at the community level. They will understand their rights as contributing members of the fund, borrowers, business people and repatriates. SLMF was developed in response to the success of micro lending institutions in suburban India and Bangladesh and the desire of rural African communities to be free of international assistance. Its perpetuating knowledge system has proven highly successful in both South America and Sub-Saharan Africa allowing under developed communities to live and educate others self-sufficiently. We will work with refugees to tailor this concept to the refugee and repatriate paradigm.

Business Development Training
BDT will ensure that trade skills such as hairdressing, carpentry, fish farming, agro-farming and brick making, of individuals and groups are directed by a basic knowledge of entrepreneurial organization so that they might reach the ambition of moving from subsistence to a sustainable income. We will train the students in steps that will take into consideration all aspects of their current and future situation to establish a business model that suits the community, fulfills a need and is able to be carried on after repatriation. Though starting a business in rural Zambia and DRC has an entirely different connotation than that in developed areas, we will collaborate with the Congolese refugees to guarantee compatibility. Basic accounting and in-depth market considerations will be discussed. We will also demonstrate the interaction of businesses, the formation of a market economy and the link to SLMF.

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