Keeping Darfur Refugee Women Safe by
Creating the World's Largest Solar Cooking Project
Rachel Andres’ humanitarian leadership has improved the lives of women and girls who fled the genocide in Darfur, Sudan only to become victims of rape and attack when searching for firewood outside the refugee camps where they thought they were now safe. As Founder and Director of the Solar Cooker Project of Jewish World Watch, Ms. Andres has built a national interfaith coalition raising funds to provide simple equipment that dramatically reduces the risk of violence in four refugee camps in Chad.
Ms. Andres traveled to the refugee camps to bear witness to the genocide and to evaluate the project. Together with colleagues from Jewish World Watch, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Solar Cookers International, the Chadian government, on the ground NGO Tchad Solaire and CARE International, they found an astonishing 86 percent fewer journeys away from one camp since the project began, significantly diminishing the danger to the women and girls. Andres and her JWW colleagues presented their findings in Geneva to The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and the UNHCR Deputy High Commissioner. The use of solar cookers in the camps has other positive effects including preservation of scarce trees, improved health due to reduced smoke inhalation, income generating employment, and the acquisition of new skills. JWW is now partnering with a new NGO in Chad to continue it’s important work and additionally help keep girls in school rather than out collecting firewood. Motivated by compassion and lessons learned from her grandmother whose entire family perished in the Holocaust, Andres’ leadership has drawn worldwide attention to the plight of Darfuri refugees and their need for increased protection. She feels her advocacy on behalf of others is strongly informed and inspired by her Jewish values.
Prior to her work with Jewish World Watch, Ms. Andres was an independent consultant to non-profit organizations, working with community-based, educational and professional groups. Her projects included curriculum development, conference planning, and leadership training for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Breed Street Shul Project, the Los Angeles-Tel Aviv Partnership, the Jewish Federation, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. She was the Director of the Commission on Cults and Missionaries at the Jewish Federation and co-edited Cults and Consequences: the Definitive Handbook. She has a degree in Political Science from UCLA.
