Creating a Home for Myanmar Refugees 

Since early 2015, the Rohingya minority in Myanmar have been forced to flee to Bangladesh due to harsh military attacks and persecution.  

Lalo Marjan, a Rohingya woman aged 48, witnessed this tragedy first-hand.

“I was living peacefully in Myanmar with my family. I had my husband, and two daughters. Suddenly the military entered our village and started shooting at us. Everyone was running in different directions. I was running alongside my husband and daughters through a canal. The army was shooting at us randomly,” Lalo explained. “Suddenly my husband and one of my daughters fell down, but I still held the hand of my second daughter and kept running.” 

After three days, Lalo returned to the site where her loved ones had fallen and found they had passed away.  

“After losing my husband I could see nothing but darkness around me. Later, I entered the border of Bangladesh after walking for about five days. Even after this, the grief did not leave me. On the second day after coming to this country, my little girl also fell to her death due to hunger.” 

Lalo took shelter in a refugee camp near the province of Chakmarkul, in Bangladesh.

At the beginning of 2018, ADRA undertook radical developmental initiatives in the Chakmarkul camp – building houses, roads, bridges, schools, and playgrounds as well as distributing food to the Rohingya refugees. Furthermore, ADRA provided skills training workshops for widowed and underprivileged women in the Chakmarkul camp to help them become financially independent. 

“ADRA gave me shelter by building a house for me,” Lalo said. “They gave me food and other much needed materials to help me make a living. I was greatly benefitted by ADRA. I don’t know how I could survive if ADRA was not beside me.”

To support projects like this one that helped Lalo, you can donate to our Disaster Relief Fund here. Our Disaster Relief Fund helps people throughout the three phases of disasters: preparations, response and recovery.