Catherine Migidi
Saving Widows and Children through Self Sufficiency
Opportunities for women to support themselves in places like South Sudan are few and difficult to come by. If a wife loses her husband, she often loses her means to survive.
With no income, a woman can suddenly find herself with no way to buy food, or clothes for her family. Children risk malnutrition and illness. There is no money for school or medicine. Severe poverty threatens the future of the entire family.
Catherine Migidi is a 35 year-old mother of four children, who is extremely grateful for the difference Star Support Group made in their lives.
Star Support Group (SSG) is a Sudan Relief Fund partner in Yambio, South Sudan. They offer programs to at-risk families to equip them with skills for job opportunities and help them achieve self sufficiency.
When Catherine’s husband died, she was left with the responsibility of providing for four children – one son and three daughters. Her greatest need was food.
Star Support Group offers members a chance to be part of a community farm. With crops and livestock already in place, Catherine and her children wouldn’t need to struggle during the weeks and months it would take for food to grow on their own land. Catherine could work by helping to maintain the farm, and receive food immediately for her household.
In the meantime, Catherine was able to receive tools and resources to establish her own kitchen garden for her family. By now her personal garden is flourishing, and she’s able to grow enough food to sustain her family of five.
Catherine also does small-scale farming as an additional way to achieve income for her household, by selling the surplus locally. Through a scholarship provided by SSG, her son, the oldest child, is enrolled in school. He attends Masia Primary School in seventh grade. Education makes all the difference for children in South Sudan – the difference between a future with opportunity or one marked by the debilitating shackles of poverty.
Catherine even had the opportunity to bolster her own education. Through Star Support Group, she enrolled in an adult English class and graduated two years ago in November. In the past three years alone, SSG has helped hundreds of families gain the skills and resources to provide basic needs for their households, saving untold lives of men, women, and children from a tragic outcome. This is possible because of your partnership to support SSG’s transformative work.
Their family story would have been drastically different without the critical assistance of Star Support Group in their time of crisis. Now the trajectory of five lives has been changed for the good. Catherine summed it up when she told us, “I am so grateful for the support from SSG. May God bless you all.”
These stories of Lives Saved are possible because of your support to Sudan Relief Fund and programs we partner with like Star Support Group. Thank you for helping to save families like Catherine’s and turn their lives around from despair to hope.
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