When a crisis touches our hearts, our natural instinct is to help. For churches and faith communities, this desire often leads to food drives, clothing collections, or donations to emergency relief efforts — all valuable responses in times of urgent need.
But what happens when that need isn’t short-term?
What happens when a refugee camp isn’t a stopgap, but a home for decades?
At Equipping Hope International, one of our foundational commitments is simple: we hire local. That means when we need someone to teach English or train tailoring students in Nyarugusu Refugee Camp, we look first — and often only — to the refugee community itself.
We don’t fly in short-term instructors from the U.S. or recruit professionals from overseas. Instead, we invest in the talents, skills, and leadership already present within the camp.
Here’s why that decision isn’t just practical — it’s essential to who we are and how we believe real transformation happens.
When we first started Equipping Hope International in 2018, we didn’t begin with a long strategic plan or big donor campaign. We began with a friendship, a shared burden, and a simple desire to do something that mattered. Five years later, our work in the Nyarugusu refugee camp has grown into a small but deeply rooted effort to equip refugees with skills, opportunity, and spiritual hope.
Serving in Nyarugusu, one of the largest and longest-standing refugee camps in Africa, has taught us more than we ever expected. And as a Christian nonprofit working in Tanzania, we’ve had to unlearn some assumptions, deepen our commitments, and trust God to multiply however much we bring.
Whether you’ve been walking with us since the beginning or are just now learning about our mission, we want to share five of the most important lessons we’ve learned since launching educational and vocational programs in a refugee camp setting.
Every movement begins with a story. And for Equipping Hope International, that story begins with Augustine Mutabesha, a former refugee who turned his experience into a mission to equip others.
Augustine is not only a cofounder of Equipping Hope. He is its heartbeat.
In most organizations, success is measured in numbers like revenue, expansion, metrics that make for bold headlines and bright graphs. But in a refugee camp, where nearly everything is constrained by circumstance, success looks different.
At Equipping Hope International, we’ve spent the past several years walking alongside refugees in the Nyarugusu camp in western Tanzania. We’ve seen firsthand how long-term displacement challenges conventional ideas of progress. And we’ve learned to ask a different question: What does faithfulness look like here?
At Equipping Hope International, we often say: we are not just building programs — we are building people.
We believe that transformation comes through more than skills training or language lessons. It comes through the power of the Gospel, through the presence of Christ, and through the faithful prayers of His people.
If you’re wondering how to support the work we’re doing in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in western Tanzania, start here: pray.
In the earliest days of Equipping Hope International, before we had formed a board, launched a program, or drafted a mission statement, I kept returning to a simple but powerful idea, the kind of idea that’s easy to say but hard to live: teach a man to fish.
In refugee camps like Nyarugusu, the conversation around skills is often framed in terms of survival. Learning to sew means income. Learning English means opportunity. Agricultural training means food security.
All of these are true. But at Equipping Hope International, we believe there’s more to it.
We believe work has spiritual meaning.
In Matthew 4:19, Jesus says to His disciples, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” It’s a call to transformation, to a life spent not just surviving, but leading others into hope. At Equipping Hope International, that call shapes everything we do. But in a refugee camp where survival itself is uncertain, becoming a “fisher of men” takes on a deeper, more tangible meaning.
Yes, we want to help people encounter the love of Christ.
But we also want them to learn how to fish — and sew, and farm, and teach.
In other words: we aim to equip not just spiritual growth, but practical, daily resilience. This is our vision.
Earlier this year, we shared about a new initiative born from a challenging season — our Protecting Hope Mask Project. As COVID-19 swept across the world and into the Nyarugusu Refugee Camp, we knew our mission had to adapt. That shift led us to repurpose our tailoring program, hiring graduates to sew protective face masks for their fellow camp residents.
Months later, we can say this project did more than meet a need. It ignited hope. It created jobs. It protected families. And through it, we saw again that God is always at work, even when the world feels uncertain.
