CHARITY & COMMUNITY
Home to nearly 200,000 displaced people, Kakuma, in Kenya, is the second largest refugee camp in the world. Moved to help those who arrive with nothing apart from the clothes on their backs to live in the camp for an average of 17 years, Gabriel Rahman (Year 10) devised a suitably symbolic way of raising money – 24 hours of rowing on the same spot Rowing nowhere
O ur aim was to help as many of these people we could. In March 2017, six students and rowers from Dulwich College and Sydenham High – Darcy Quist, Laure Denaro, Hugo Wermig, Christian Hopper, Wolfgang Boettcher and myself – each completed one four-hour stint on a rowing machine, from 5pm to 5pm, to raise £16,000 in our 24-hour Ergo Challenge (the ergo being the fearsome stationary rowing machine used for punishing training sessions). We had all heard about Kakuma – the name of the camp means ‘nowhere’ in Swahili – through assemblies, films and the exhibition Living Nowhere , organised by MyStart, a creative-arts charity that work in Kakuma. This had been held at Dulwich Picture Gallery the previous summer with the aim of spreading the word and inspiring people to help the camp. We knew we had to do something, something big at that. But what? We realised we all had a common skill: rowing. From then on, the plan for the 24-hour Ergo Challenge was set. We had to spread the word. We sent hundreds of emails, made a JustGiving web page and publicised it on social media, newspapers and through large social media presences that have expertise in the fields of rowing or charity. The donations and awareness started building after this initial kick and every day there were new donations and messages of support from friends, family and even complete strangers who wanted to help us. This phase of planning was probably the most important and was as much of a team effort as the actual 24 hours itself.
Every day there were new donations and messages of support from friends, family and even complete strangers who wanted to help us Finally, after months of planning, the day came. After a full day of lessons, the ergo began at 5pm on the dot. All through the night we rowed, never stopping, everyone completing their four hours in one stint and rowing an overall distance of over 257,000m. Our £16,000 target was safely raised for Kakuma, something that gives all six of us immense pride. The money will go to the camp via MyStart and help people there to socialise, empathise and tell their stories; it also helps them improve their prospects if and when they leave the camp. In the UK, it will also help to fund work in schools educating children about what it means to be a refugee and about the problems that led to the camp’s creation, which have been much less in the public eye in recent years. We hope that what we’ve done will, like last summer’s exhibition, trigger more people to think about refugees – what it means to be one and the effects of displacement and its causes. Lastly, I also hope we have inspired others to run events and raise money for MyStart and the camp.
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