Our Beginnings

'equal parts mother teresa and rambo' 

Dr. Hawa Abdi, the founder of the Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation, has been called 'equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo' by Glamour Magazine. Dr. Hawa showed her tenacity at a young age: she became the first female gynecologist in Somalia, and also obtained a law degree and lectured at Somali National University. Before the start of the civil war in Somalia, Dr. Hawa saw a need for a rural health clinic for women. In 1983, she opened a one-room clinic on her family's ancestral lands along the Afgooye corridor, on the outskirts of Mogadishu. Dr. Hawa gradually transformed the clinic into a 400-bed hospital. When the war started, families fled to take shelter on Dr. Hawa's land. To preserve camp security and peace during the civil war, Dr. Hawa outlawed domestic violence and prohibited the residents from identifying by their clan. 

hope village WAs born

Soon, 90,000 people, mostly women and children, had come to Dr. Hawa's land, and most stayed. Dr. Hawa and her daughters, Deqo and Amina, worked around the clock to provide care to displaced and injured Somalis. In the height of the bombing, the hospital saw 500 patients per day. Dr. Hawa and her family did not stop there: they created a camp for the displaced Somalis and built a primary school, high school, community agricultural project, and women’s education center. They renamed the community the Dr. Hawa Abdi Hope Village. In 2008, Dr. Hawa retired from running Hope Village and her daughter, Dr. Deqo Mohamed, took over, and headed Village operations until Hope Village closed in 2020.

In 2012, there were 90,000 residents living in Hope Village - about one percent of Somalia's overall population - mainly consisting of women, children and the elderly.

What Hope Village Achieved

Hope Village operated until 2020. During its operation, Hope Village provided high-quality healthcare, education, and sanitation services, developed cutting-edge sustainable agricultural solutions, and delivered life-saving aid during times of crisis. Dr. Hawa also developed an innovative, autonomous governance and justice system for Hope Village, in which a council of respected community members mediate disputes and investigate crimes.

Healthcare

Since Dr. Hawa first opened her clinic in 1983, she and her staff always provided general, emergency and maternal care to displaced Somalis independent of their clan, gender, religious and political affiliation.

The Dr. Hawa Abdi General Hospital Since was at the center of Hope Village and has touched the lives of thousands more beyond the Lower Shabelle region. It has been central in the development of medical capacity throughout Somalia, playing a vital role training new medical staff, educating the general population about good health and championing innovative Somali-wide training programs.

The 400-bed hospital provided vaccinations, pediatric and maternal care, gynecological and obstetric services, had two operating theaters, and a laboratory and pharmacy. On average, 20 babies were born at the hospital each day. The hospital’s emergency care and training capacity included a Cholera Treatment Centre (CTC) to provide treatment and care for those most severely affected and a Therapeutic Feeding Department to assist severely malnourished children. The hospital staff also regularly provided education and access-to-medicine programs designed to reduce child and maternal mortality rates, and specialist, web-based training for nurses, doctors, and midwives throughout Somalia.

Education

The Waqaf-Dhiblawe Primary School and the Hawa Abdi High School have sought to lay the foundation for a new future by providing a new generation of Somali leaders with skills, opportunities, and a fundamental understanding of human rights and their own political agency. Both of our schools have a 1:1 ratio of boys and girls and are partly funded by small, annual contributions from families who send their children to the schools.

The Waqaf-Dhiblawe Primary School (grades 1 – 7), has served more than 1,000 students since it opened its doors in 2010, providing lessons in Math, English, Science, Arabic, and Somali. Since 2016, when the Hawa Abdi High School opened, more than 500 students have taken co-ed courses in Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, English, Arabic and Religious Studies. Many of our high school students have also participated in an extracurricular soccer league. In 2017, the school graduated its first class of students, many of whom have since gone on to university.

In 2015, DHAF commissioned the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School to design a four-year curriculum on human rights and conflict resolution for our high school students. Since then, a team of Yale students worked with educators on-the-ground in Somalia to create activities and lesson plans that challenge students to think critically about the meaning and application of human rights, the history and future of Somalia, and how they can participate in civic life. The curriculum has since been piloted in Hope Village and with trainee teachers in the Faculty of Education at Somali National University.

Aspire Africa: Professional Development for Teachers in Post-Conflict Zones

To provide teachers in Somalia and beyond with the resources, mentorship, and training they need to promote student-centered learning and provide for the needs of students who have experienced trauma, DHAF partnered with Solutions for Interrupted Education, Inc. to launch Aspire Africa - a professional development program for teachers in Somalia and other post-conflict zones. 

In June 2019, we piloted the Aspire Africa program with teachers from Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, and the DRC at African Leadership University in Kigali, Rwanda.

COMBATTING MALNUTRITION

Every Ramadan – the holy month in Somalia – Hope Village staff offered free meals to 500 people every day, the majority of whom were women and children. In 2018, the Village provided14,500 people with meals.

Drought Response

Somalia as a whole, and the Afgooye Corridor in particular, are increasingly vulnerable to severe droughts. The Village's well was the only source of free fresh water in the region.

In 2017, when Somalia experienced the most severe drought in Somalia’s living memory, Hope Village helped provide life-saving food, clean water, and healthcare to hundreds Somalis at risk of starvation. With support from DHAF, Hope Village we set up a feeding center to provide daily meals to more than 600 people each day, half of whom were children. The Dr. Hawa Abdi General Hospital treated more than 3,500 children for malnutrition and more than 150 for life-threatening severe watery diarrhea.

During the drought crisis, Hope Village also teamed up with a group of volunteers from the Somali diaspora to deliver food to the neediest and to map the crisis. Abaraaha (which means ‘famine’ in Somali) created a unique, online, interactive map that let us track the nationwide crisis – disease outbreaks, numbers of deaths, where food had been delivered and where food was needed, and how to coordinate other humanitarian aid efforts. 

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

Twenty years of food aid in southern Somalia have left farmers bankrupt and the country aid dependent. Climate change is soon becoming one of the biggest challenges facing the Horn of Africa and will threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Somalis. Hope Village’s Agriculture Program recognized that the only solution to Somalia’s food security crisis is to develop local agriculture, and this food must be grown intelligently and efficiently to compensate for these conditions. Hope Village worked to develop cutting-edge sustainable agricultural solutions, such as low-cost and low-tech biotechnological interventions:

• MORINGA OLEIFERA: We conducted a pilot study of this tree in Hope Village. The fast-growing and resilient Moringa Oleifera tree has rightfully earned the name the “Miracle Tree.”  Its seeds contain six times more iron than spinach, higher calcium than milk, more potassium than banana, and its leaves are 27% protein. In Africa, it is becoming a groundbreaking food source to help counter malnutrition in children and nursing mothers, and prevent imminent starvation. On top of their superior nutritional value, seed proteins of Moringa trees can also disinfect and clear turbid water, reducing the levels of harmful bacteria by 90-99%. 

• MULTI-CROPPING SINGLE STRAND AGRICULTURE: In order to ensure a continual food source for the camp, we have worked to implement a pesticide-free multiple cropping system of companioning crops. The intensive cultivation of these crops has used an indigenous method of organic farming.

• MILK FORTIFICATION: By fortifying milk with essential nutrients, namely DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid, we have aimed to reduce deficiencies of micro-nutrients and improve dietary regimes.