This year the Gossels Fund for Human Dignity will sponsor a program by Sasha Chanoff, founder and Executive Director of Mapendo International.  Last June, Mapendo International was featured in a headline story in the Boston Globe describing how the organization works to aid refugees affected by war and conflict who have fallen through the net of humanitarian assistance.  Chanoff has worked for over a decade in refugee rescue, relief and resettlement operations in Africa and the US.  Before launching Mapendo, he consulted with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Kenya and worked with the International Organization for Migration throughout Africa, identifying refugees in danger, undertaking rescue missions and working on refugee protection issues.

He will speak generally about Mapendo International’s successes in protecting and rescuing forgotten refugees in Africa.   He will also tell stories about individuals, such as a young girl named Yar.
Yar was part of the Lost Boys and Girls resettlement that Sasha had helped spearhead from Africa in 2001.  She is now settled in the Boston area.  In 2005, when many of the Sudanese knew that Sasha had founded Mapendo International, Yar contacted Sasha to tell him that her mother, who had been living with her two younger sisters in a refugee camp in Kenya, had been bitten by a snake and had passed away.  Yar’s sisters, aged 12 and 15, were now orphans and were in danger of being kidnapped and sold into marriage in Sudan.   Soon after that, the girls fended off an attack in the camp, although one had to be hospitalized.  That’s when Mapendo stepped in and got the girls out of the camp and into a safehouse.

Click here for the complete press release.