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RPCV Voices: TCP Global Serving Refugees in Uganda

RPCV Voices: TCP Global Serving Refugees in Uganda

By: Helene Dudley, TCP Global Co-Executive Director, RPCV Colombia  (68-70) & Slovakia (97-99)

RPCV Voices is a blog series on the Peace Corps Community for Refugees website. The purpose is to allow returned Peace Corps Volunteers the opportunity to share their experience as refugees, work with refugee communities, or opinions about the refugee crisis. If you have a story to share, please email morganking296@gmail.com.


TCP Global is a small, flexible, RPCV-run volunteer effort to improve economic opportunities in marginalized communities.  Born at the peak of internal displacement in Colombia in 2000, TCP Global focuses on service to small, remote or otherwise marginalized communities that too often remain beyond the reach of major aid efforts. It currently supports 76 loan programs in fourteen countries and expands primarily through recommendations from RPCVs.

TCP Global is on the brink of opening its first micro-loan programs to serve refugees. Funds are in the bank in Uganda.  Innocent Ajaga, founder and head of Care Community Education Center (CCEDUC), which will oversee the programs, completed the 12-hour bus ride to Kampala to sign papers and has selected two Women’s Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) in the refugee camp to administer the loans. All that is needed is final approval from the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda for CCEDUC to work in the BidiBidi Refugee camp, one of the world’s largest such camps.

There is a lesson here. CCEDUC recently conducted a survey of 36 households (10%) in its home-base in Odropi, fifteen kilometers from BidiBidi. They learned 27 have no latrine, 97% say their water source (river, unprotected well or stream) dries up at least once a month. The average household spends 10% of its $796 annual income treating diarrhea and even more treating malaria. CCEDUC oversees twelve VSLAs working to improve economic conditions in Odropi, and after losing most of the men during eighteen years of war, there are plenty of challenges in Odropi, but not enough to justify ignoring Sudanese refugees nearby.

Since many VSLAs lack an international bank account and the ability to send excel reports, CCEDUC handles those functions while the women run the loan programs. Like the two in the refugee camp, the VSLAs have over a year of experience managing loan programs funded by their combined savings. They were looking for additional loan capital when CCEDUC introduced them to RPCV Chris Roesel. Fresh from his Uganda trip, Chris then met Helene Dudley of TCP Global at Shriver Circle Weekend. CCEDUC signed an agreement with TCP Global in March and two VSLAs issued their first loans on Mother’s Day, 2020.

Donations to support TCP Global are made through the National Peace Corps Association which serves as the fiscal agent. 


 March 02, 2021