Rohingya Relief
Hundreds of thousands of desperate Rohingya Muslims — more than half of them children — flooded out of Myanmar’s Rakhine state into southern Bangladesh in 2017, bringing with them accounts of the unspeakable violence, terror, and brutality that had forced them to flee. Today, almost a million Rohingya refugees are living in camps and settlements in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Daily life is dominated by the search for food and water, and coping with difficult, sometimes dangerous living conditions.
Half a million young people growing up in the camps are still traumatized by their escape from Myanmar, and the future appears as nothing more than an abyss of uncertainty. In Myanmar, most Rohingya have no legal identity or citizenship. In Bangladesh, babes born within the camps are not registered at birth, so they lack both a legal identity and a refugee status. Until conditions in Myanmar improve, Rohingya children and young people remain a stateless minority, excluded from formal schooling and desperately in need of marketable skills.
Older children and adolescents who are deprived of opportunities to learn or make a living are at great risk of becoming a “lost generation” vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking. Girls and women without education or job skills are at particular risk of sexual and other gender-based violence, including being forced into early marriage.
And so therefore with your support, Be A Mercy Foundation has done the following for Rohingya refugees and orphans:
2017: Dispensed over a million dollars’ worth of aid among three camps namely Kutupalong, Tan Khali and Gum Dum.
2018: Fed, educated and provide medical aid for over 850 Rohingya orphans and 300 Rohingya adults on a daily basis through the 2018 Orphan Sponsorship Program.
In addition, your efforts made it possible for Mercy Village to be established through the construction of 2 orphanages, 2 elementary schools, 2 high schools, 2 masjids, 3 clinics, over 500 homes, and over 100 water wells.
2019: Through its long term empowerment programs Be a Mercy Foundation (BMF) took on the responsibility for running a junior-high school of 120 students, a primary school of 250 orphaned children, a scholarship program for 14 Rohingya youth who have made it to colleges, 2 vocational sewing centers for 100 Rohingya women, all of that with no overhead costs to the administrative work done in the US, since they are all done on volunteer time and money.