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Heja’s Story of Strength and Survival
Heja was once a teacher in Sudan – a woman with a master’s degree, a love for learning and deep hopes for her daughters’ futures. In the classroom, she was confident, respected and full of purpose. But everything changed when violence escalated across Sudan and war erupted in 2023.
She was forced to flee, leaving everything she knew and loved behind. Overnight she became one of more than 14.3 million people displaced in Sudan – a crisis that’s staggering in scale and still growing by the day – and one of over 123 million people forcibly displaced worldwide.
Heja and her daughters moved from place to place, searching for safety, until they made the painful decision to leave their homeland and cross into the neighboring country of Chad. Along the way, Heja was injured and required surgery on her leg. Metal pins were placed in her ankle — and never removed. To this day, she lives with chronic pain, a constant reminder of all she has endured.
Life in a Refugee Camp in Chad
Now, Heja lives in Chad’s Koursigue Refugee Camp, where she has stepped into leadership as the head of the women. In this role, Heja advocates for the safety and wellbeing of women and girls in the camp, ensuring they have access to vital resources and support. Despite her own suffering, she continues to advocate fiercely for others.
Families who fled unimaginable violence are now facing another kind of suffering. Heja sees the anguish of mothers unable to feed or care for their children. She sees girls forced to leave the camp to collect firewood – some of whom return traumatized, having been attacked on the road. She sees the crushing weight of untreated trauma on her neighbors. Just a day before we met Heja, a young woman in the camp took her own life.
The needs in Koursigue are staggering. The hospital is miles away and inaccessible without transport. Heja herself cannot get the medical care she needs. People with disabilities, many of whom lost limbs in the conflict, are left without support. Pregnant women and infants are severely malnourished. And still, more families arrive each day, reuniting with loved ones or fleeing new waves of violence, only to find a camp already stretched past its limits.
And yet, amidst the suffering, there are glimmers of hope shining through.
Meeting Urgent Needs in the Refugee Camp
World Relief is on the ground in Koursigue, responding with urgency to meet critical needs. We’ve drilled boreholes to provide clean, safe water. We’ve distributed food and essential household items like sleeping mats, water jugs, soap and cooking supplies to restore dignity. We’ve established a health clinic and a nutrition center that offers life-saving care to malnourished infants and pregnant or lactating mothers.
But the need continues to grow. The camp hasn’t received food distributions in over four months as the global pool of humanitarian funds continues to shrink. Children go to bed hungry. Parents are skipping meals so their little ones can eat. The food crisis has grown beyond current capacity, and thousands of families like Heja’s are suffering.
“I have nothing here. I lost my home, my family, everything,” Heja says.
She may have lost everything, but she hasn’t lost her voice. And because of you, she hasn’t lost her future.
Heja dreams of more – of vocational training and equipment so women can earn a living, care for their families, and lead their communities with strength and purpose. She dreams of opening a center where women can learn skills together and support each other. She dreams of seeing her daughters back in school, of raising a new generation of strong, educated girls who will one day lead their communities. And she dreams of safety, of a peaceful Sudan to which she and her community can return. And more than anything, she dreams of safety, of peace returning to Sudan, of the day when she and her community can go home, when they no longer have to live as refugees, but as people restored to the land they love. Because of you, families like Heja’s have experienced real hope. But millions of others in Koursigue and around the world still wait – for food, for clean water, for basic dignity.
Providing Critical Support
World Relief is committed to continuing our work in the Koursigue Refugee Camp and in others across the globe. With your support, we hope to sustain and expand health and nutrition programs, build additional latrines to prevent the spread of disease and ensure access to clean water through boreholes. We also hope to begin regular food distributions for the over 14,000 refugees in the Koursigue Refugee Camp and serve those in the host community who share meager resources with refugees, day in and day out.
We stand with those who have been forced to flee their homes across the globe, walking alongside them at each step of the journey — from surviving to thriving. In recent months, desperation has deepened for many as crucial funding has been cut and the global pool of humanitarian funds has shrunk further. This means that individuals and families who have already endured unimaginable hardship now face reduced access to housing, food, skills development for income generation and basic medical care.
In refugee camps, that means more crowded shelters and fewer meals. For those rebuilding their lives in a new country, it means living in constant uncertainty, wondering how they will make ends meet or put their kids in school.
Will you help by giving today?
When you give, you help us meet urgent needs of families in crisis and build lasting resilience. Let’s keep going. Let’s remind Heja — and others who’ve been forced to flee — that they are not forgotten.
Hillary Richards Gonçalves serves as the Senior Director of Partner Trust and Impact at World Relief, where she leads strategic storytelling and content development that helps connect donors, churches and partners to the transformative work happening around the world. With a deep commitment to elevating the voices of those often overlooked, Hillary works closely with local World Relief teams to gather and share stories that reflect both the immense challenges and profound resilience of the communities where we serve. Over the years, she has traveled to multiple countries to witness firsthand how local churches and communities are responding to crises with compassion, strength and hope. Her recent visit to a refugee camp in Chad offered a powerful glimpse into the reality of displacement – and the dignity and courage of those rebuilding their lives.