South Sudan: Delivering vital relief and livelihoods opportunities in hard-to-reach areas

South Sudan is the world’s youngest nation, gaining independence from Sudan in 2011. While this put an end to Africa’s most protracted civil war, it did little to secure peace for a diverse country made up of 60 different major ethnic groups.

Years of internal conflict inside the country has resulted in an protracted humanitarian crisis. Two thirds of the population are in dire need of support. Many people go hungry and have no access to safe drinking water or sanitation facilities. The country’s health and education systems are particularly fragile. One in three schools have been destroyed or damaged leaving more than 2 million school-aged children out-of-school. In the hospitals, a limited supply of doctors’ are left to grapple with major health scares including malaria season and soaring maternal mortality rates.

Natural disaster is also a mounting threat. In 2019, the government declared a state of emergency in three states following devastating floods that washed away the livelihoods of nearly one million people and exacerbated existing issues.

Population

South Sudan has a population of 13.3 million people

Poverty

At least 80% of the population are living on the equivalent of less than US$1 per day

Our Reach

In 2019, over 400,000 people took part in our programmes

What we do in South Sudan

Overview

Dorcas works inside South Sudan to help vulnerable people with the immediate and long-term consequences of conflict and natural disaster.

We work to create sustainable livelihoods for marginalised groups in hard-to-reach regions - with an aim to reduce the risks of reinforcing factors including conflict, underdevelopment and climate extremes.

COVID-19 Emergency Response

As part of our COVID-19 Response in South Sudan we joined forces with local partner Mary Help Association to set up triage stations for the screening of COVID-19 patients at designated hospitals including Wau Teaching Hospital. Each station is equipped with handwashing facilities, personal protective equipment (PPE), infrared thermometers, beds, oxygen concentrators, wheel chairs and other essential items.

To support this, Dorcas has scaled up its water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions in a number of key locations, while also paying extra attention to the food security of at-risk communities. Local partner Women Development Group is also supporting COVID-19 awareness-raising efforts.

Learn more

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

Waterborne diseases remain the leading cause of death among children in South Sudan. Our Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes offer short-term solutions to tackle the spread, such as access to clean water pumps and basic toilets as well as ways to separate human waste from contact with people. We also work with communities to build climate-resistant infrastructure and develop good hygiene practices - this is how we bring about long-term change.

Entrepreneurship

We provide vocational training, start-up grants and business development opportunities for marginalised women and men. We partner with local civil society organisations to train people in demand-driven skills that match the local context. The inclusion of disadvantaged groups such as those with disabilities is key - and relatively unique in South Sudan.

Food Security and Livelihoods

We train smallholder farmers in climate-smart agriculture so that they can put food on the table for their families and build back better following periods of conflict or natural disaster. This approach sees farmers trial different production methods designed to increase productivity, reduce emissions and add value to the final product. Dorcas is at the forefront of exploring innovative ways to enhance farming systems - all with the aim to tackle food security and climate change simultaneously.

Nutritional Support

More than one million children in South Sudan are acutely malnourished. We provide nutritional support for new and expecting mothers monitoring their wellbeing during pregnancy and beyond to ensure the healthy development of new-born babies. We also offer supplementary therapeutic feeding and, in severe cases, additional care at one of our small clinics. To increase knowledge about the importance of a healthy diet, we train mothers to set up a kitchen garden, contributing to the increased nutritional health of the family as a whole and lowering the dependency on emergency food assistance. Read more on battling malnutrition.

Skills for Work - Youth for the Future

Decades of violence and instability has left the majority of the population in South Sudan deprived of their most basic needs - let alone a shot at a brighter future. Weak state capacity and high national debt as a result of protracted conflicts has seen education systems destabilised and vital infrastructure destroyed, diminishing institutional TVET capacity. Undiversified industries, heavily reliant on oil, have also seen unemployment creep up.

Dorcas works to close this critical skills gap and provide concrete pathways to work through our Skills for Work programme. The programme - implemented in collaboration with Light for the World and Edukans - is designed to develop sustainable livelihoods and create productive employment opportunities for younger generations in remote communities.

Meet our Country Director…

Agnes Kroese – Country Director

“While civil conflict in South Sudan regularly makes the headlines, the direct impact this has had on people's lives is less raised. People die from hunger, preventable diseases and armed conflict on a daily basis. Years of underdevelopment and ethnic violence, coupled with natural disasters, don't just destroy lives, they also tear apart our social fabric and force people out. That’s why Dorcas works on the continuum laid out by the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus. We ensure that humanitarian relief and sustainable development go hand-in-hand while always looking to facilitate local peace-building efforts in complex political geographies.”