Portugal: NGO Helpo starts fund-raising in Sept. to help displaced Mozambican minors in Cabo Delgado

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Portugal: NGO Helpo starts fund-raising in Sept. to help displaced Mozambican minors in Cabo Delgado

8:07 CAT | 26 Aug 2021

File photo: Lusa

The Portuguese NGO Helpo will hold, between September 1 and 13, a fund-raising campaign in Pingo Doce supermarkets across the country, to help thousands of displaced children from Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, to study.

“With the slogan “For displaced children, school is a first home”, the campaign seeks to raise awareness among customers of the Jerónimo Martins group, in Pingo Doce outlets and on mercadao.pt, to buy vouchers of €1, €3 and €5, which will make the education of Mozambican children easier”, says the organisation, in a statement released today.

According to the statement, it is estimated that there are already “over 400,000 displaced children fleeing the armed conflicts in Cabo Delgado, who left everything behind, and who were left homeless, and for whom school becomes a first home: a place of safety, coexistence and stability, of hope for the future”.

The Portuguese can contribute by purchasing vouchers, which allow for the distribution of snacks (€1), backpacks (€3) and schoolbooks (€5), explains Helpo in the statement.

The NGO stresses that for these children “a snack, distributed at school may be the incentive to go to class every day” because in rural communities “many children have to walk several kilometres to get to school”, so “a backpack makes all the difference”.

The NGO recalls that the province of Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique, is experiencing “a dramatic situation, a scenario of an urgent and unprecedented humanitarian crisis”, which has dragged on and worsened since October 2017, an emergency context, where the human rights of at least 800,000 people “are flouted every minute”.

With 12 years of work in Cabo Delgado province, Helpo has been closely monitoring this humanitarian crisis.

In July 2020, Helpo designed and implemented an Intervention Plan to help the displaced in Cabo Delgado and Nampula, through emergency food assistance, distribution of clothing, household items and hygiene material.

It also provided psychosocial support to families and psychological stress screening, and developed awareness raising work on the integration of displaced people in school communities.

Source: Lusa