COVID-19 Coronavirus

As a means to curtail the spread of Corona Virus, the Rwandan & Ugandan governments suspended in-person, classroom education in 2020. The impact proved to be even more dire to our refugee students than previously imagined. When the governments discovered that they needed to ration scarce food resources, their citizens were higher in the priority chain than were refugees.

Previously, BEF offered school-cafeteria style food service as we had been providing nutrition to our students so that they could concentrate on their studies instead of wondering what & when they might eat again. With the closure of schools and the rationing of food, we had at stake the very lives of our students. While education increases the quality of life, that requires that the students survive starvation-like conditions.

BEF stood in the gap to save the lives of 787 people in the BEF family, 534 of whom were students & young adults.