World Refugee Day 2026 — Until Everyone Is Safe

There is a quiet kind of courage in starting over with nothing — and an even quieter kind in choosing, every day, to build something anyway.

Across Kakuma, Kalobeyei, and the host communities of Turkana, BLEC works alongside women who have lost almost everything — and watched them rebuild everything that matters. Women who arrived with nothing but resolve are now running small businesses, tending their own farms, and standing in front of community meetings with their heads up and their voices steady.

Esther, a mother of four in Kalobeyei, used her first loan from her savings group to buy maize in bulk. Today she supplies three local kiosks. "I am not waiting for help anymore," she says. "I am the help."

Naserian, who joined BLEC's gender advocacy training earlier this year, once stayed silent in community meetings. Now she leads discussions on women's rights in her own village. "I used to think my voice didn't matter," she says. "Now I open the meeting."

In the fields, refugee and host women are learning the same regenerative farming techniques side by side — composting, intercropping, drought-resistant planting — turning dry, unforgiving soil into something that feeds their families.

This is not charity. This is partnership.

On this World Refugee Day, BLEC celebrates the women of Turkana — refugee and host alike. We see you. We celebrate you. We stand with you.

Until everyone is safe, the work continues. And here in Turkana, it continues today — together.