Student can’t just turn his back on crisis
Former refugee starts non-profit to bring water solutions to areas in need
University of Toronto student James Madhier was doing research on a barren farm in Ghana in May 2016, when the landowner, a young mother, approached him with her small child in tow.
Madhier, there to study solarpowered farming, expected the woman might simply introduce herself to the researchers, or ask about sustainable water solutions they were exploring that could help her farm — a cocoa farm intercropped with plantain, which had been decimated by a drought.
Instead, she said: “Take my daughter with you.”
“We were really shocked,” said Madhier, 29. It was the best thing she could think to do to help her child, he said, a sentiment he sympathized with.
“I left thinking it was not long ago that I was in a similar situation, helpless in South Sudan during the war, and now here I am. I’m coming back from a developed world, Toronto, as a researcher. I can’t just turn my back.”
On the plane back to Toronto, Madhier drew up a plan for what would become Rainmaker Enterprise — a non-profit development organization that aims to bring solar-powered irrigation infrastructure to Africa to combat food insecurity caused by droughts. He founded it in 2017.
Rainmaker Enterprise will host its first annual Water for Peace Cocktail Reception on Saturday, featuring keynote remarks by Roméo Dallaire, founder of the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, which aims to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and South Sudanese-Canadian award-winning musician and former child soldier Emmanuel Jal. The gala will raise funds for Rainmaker’s upcoming pilot project in South Sudan.
The initiative comes just five years after Madhier was selected as one of 129 student refugees given the opportunity to come to Canada for postsecondary education through the World University Service of Canada’s (WUSC) Student Refugee Program.
Madhier grew up under the abiding threat of bombings, militia groups, and famine as generations of civil war ravaged South Sudan. He eventually fled the country at 15, finding his way to a Kenyan refugee camp and, through WUSC, went on to attend the University of Toronto, where he is completing peace, conflict and justice studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs.
Throughout university, Madhier has researched sustainable development solutions around the world and addressed leaders at the United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting on peace-building in April.
Soon he will return to Tonj in South Sudan, a village he used to call home, with a plan to “tap into the power of the sun.”
“Solar-powered water infrastructure is enabling communities to engage in year-round agriculture, because climate change — with extreme droughts and extreme flux that comes from sporadic rain — has caused failure of crops, and has devastated a lot of communities,” he said.
His team of 10 people is working to address extreme hunger, water scarcity, and water-driven conflicts and health issues by installing solar-powered water pumps and drip-irrigation systems, starting in South Sudan and expanding to other countries. In addition to it being his home country, Madhier chose South Sudan as his pilot country because he said it is among the least prepared to deal with issues of climate change related to limited water sources.