To create a strong and cohesive refugee community, filled by individual empowerment, integrated health, Human rights/ freedom, Legal services and cross-cultural engagement.
- To create opportunities for marginalized refugees to acquire new skills and build on existing ones, thereby eroding traditional barriers between refugees and the host community.
- To secure and protect the rights of refugees and asylum seekers through advocacy.
- To provide a safe space with freedom, without discrimination and violence
- Accountability,Transparence and reporting
- Integrity
- Team work
- Empathy
- Protection
- Confidentiality
- Innovation and creativity
- To foster skills development and livelihoods opportunities through targeted services to refugees and asylum seekers.
- To promote access to health and legal services through health outreach services, Referrals, training peer educators and training of paralegals from the community.
- To reduce stress upon humanitarian agencies through the creation of a sustainable structure that is replenished by the unique and varied skills of refugees themselves.
- To provide accommodation and emergency safe shelter to the most vulnerable marginalized (GNS) refugees and asylum seekers.
- To increase access to nun discriminatory social services to vulnerable marginalized refugees and asylum seekers by providing accommodation and emergency safe shelter, food distribution, access to information and Counselling and a networking space in the community.
The Community Empowerment and Self-Support organization (“CESSO”) is a refugee-led, community-based organization targeting marginalized refugees and asylum seekers residing in Nairobi, Kenya & surrounding cities. There are approximately 1,000 marginalized urban refugees and asylum seekers and currently CESSO has 120 registered members.
CESSO offers a dynamic response to an increasingly complex and evolving humanitarian environment. Since 2011, the number of displaced people worldwide has spawned increasingly. As these needs and appeals have grown, so too has the response gap. The global humanitarian system is now faced with an unprecedented funding crisis that threatens not only the delivery of vital services to vulnerable populations, but also the delicate coexistence of refugees in their countries of asylum. The need for creative and innovative solutions is urgent. CESSO was initiated in November 2015 purposely to fill this gap.
The financial projections of the current humanitarian crisis place an unprecedented need for finding local solutions to a global problem. Emphasis needs to be shifted from top-down institutional responses to answers found in the dynamism of marginalized refugee communities themselves. While maximizing on the few resources available, the thrust of protection work should be tailored towards empowering communities to respond to their own needs. Building the resilience of the marginalized community, in this context, reduces stress upon service providers while equipping individuals with the requisite skills to confront everyday challenges both in Kenya and elsewhere. Ultimately, however, it fosters crucial relationships within the community itself and between refugees and service providers.
