International Rescue Committee

All eyes are on Ukraine right now, but the refugee crisis isn't limited to the Eastern European country. Our #VBGIVESBACK partner, International Rescue Committee, is currently in more than 40 countries around the world, helping all people in need to recover and rebuild their lives. Here, we meet one such refugee, Lilian Dawa, who fled her native South Sudan—with her two young children in tow—due to its catastrophic civil war. She had already lost her husband to the fighting—he was taken from their home, tied to a tree and shot.

But rather than let the grief and devastation overpower her family's lives, Dawa is fighting back… by paying it forward. Based in the Bidi Bidi refugee settlement—home to some 270,000 South Sudanese refugees—the former social worker is now a volunteer with the IRC, supporting the women in her community. "I work with the IRC team that protects women and girls from violence and abuse and educates people about ways to prevent violence," she writes. "I love my work—it’s my talent."

I saw so many things in South Sudan: massive killing, cold bloodshed, death without reason. I was scared for my children to go to school. Students would run from their classrooms if they heard gunshots.

People were panicking. You could go to the market in the morning, but by midday people would disappear: If they saw someone dressed like a soldier, they would run away. People couldn’t sleep because of the gunshots. Life was a misery.

My job as a social worker ended because the local nonprofit organization that employed me had to close as a result of the insecurity. I managed to earn some money doing manual labor—digging—but as a widow with two children it was hard for me to raise enough for safe transportation to Uganda.

As a result, we had to walk for ten days to reach the border, joining other people who were also fleeing. I brought water in my five-liter container and some boiled cassava for us to eat.

There were many threats on the journey: If you left the road for a little distance to look for food, you were are attacked by the rebels and taken into the bush to be given “awareness” of their cause. If you came back to the roadside, you were questioned by government soldiers about who you met on the way.

It was also hard for us to find food: You didn’t see any markets. And many of the houses along the road were abandoned. Only if you could reach the home of a Samaritan, maybe that person would give you something small to eat. But we never dared to hope.

One day, suddenly, we reached a place where the government soldiers collided with the rebels. My son went missing in the chaos. I was out of my senses because I didn’t know where my child was. I was thinking, “He’s dead.”

I thought that was the end of my life.