Scale
Opened: 2004/03/21
19,400 people (2012.02)
20,079 people (2009)
3.6 square miles = 100362240 square feet ≈1742 football fields
Density: 5173 square feet ≈ 480 square meter/person
Low density
Iridimi is one of the 12 refugee camps in eastern Chad that are home to nearly 285,000 refugees who fled from the genocide in Darfur across the border in Sudan. More than half of the refugees are children, and most have known no other home than these remote camps since 2004. As of February 2012, Iridimi's population was approximately 19,400 refugees, spread across 3.6 square miles of tents and reed shelters in the desert.
Geographic Region
Coordinates (Google earth lat, long)
Climate and Altitude
Environmental Factors
Earthquake, tsunami, droughts, etc.
15°7′15.11″N
22°7′43.34″E
Resources
Food, water Solar Cookers International (SCI) board member Gabriele Simbriger-Williams visited Iridimi refugee camp in Chad as part of a team assessing the Darfur refugee solar cooker project implemented by KoZon Foundation and supported by SCI and Jewish World Watch.
Service Infrastructure (Resources)
Proximity and availability of resources
Hard and soft resources
Communication, internet...etc
1 health center 9 primary schools, 28 community centers 30 water points A vocational training center will be opened in Iridimi camp to teach young refugees practical skills like sewing, shoe-repairing or woodworking. A nursery school will also be set up to promote education for little girls. Boys, too, will get the attention they need, with a new system to be established to educate those who tend to livestock for a living and thus are unable to attend school.
Library
Iridimi was chosen as the place where the initial funds could have the greatest impact, for several reasons:
Iridimi has an existing building that can house the library, indicated in the above satellite image by the green arrow (image courtesy Google Maps). Only three of the camps have such suitable buildings; in the other nine, construction would be required. This allows us to spend more of our initial funds on books and to start the project sooner, rather than waiting to raise the additional funds needed for construction. (Note: if you previously sponsored bricks for library construction, your donation is being used for stocking the Iridimi library.) The building is centrally located in the camp and adjacent to two primary school buildings. Proximity to the school buildings is especially important because this will make it easier for the teachers, who are themselves refugees, to use the library. When teachers learn from educational books in the library, they can share their new knowledge with their students, multiplying the impact of the books. The building will have a capacity for 20,000 books. This is a significant number, but it is really just more than 1 book per capita. How many books are in all the public libraries, school libraries, and homes in your town, in comparison with its population?
The building, which serves as a youth center, already has refugee librarians who manage its current very small collection of books. This means less training will be required, and the librarians will already be somewhat familiar with the needs of the camp population.
Regarding the last point, the UN Refugee Agency indicated that Iridimi's existing books are insufficient not only in quantity, but also in their relevance to the camp population. They are either too difficult for children (or newly literate adults) to read, or they do not cover enough subjects of interest. With funding for a 20,000-book library, we can remedy this, provided that we have a good understanding of the reading needs of the refugees. Therefore, Book Wish Foundation has asked the UN Refugee Agency to conduct a survey of reading needs in Iridimi.
