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CHANGING THE NARRATIVE

How a refugee-run factory is helping the Netherlands meet its need for face masks

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dutch entrepreneurs teamed up with a work-learn programme for refugees to create the Netherlands' first face mask factory.

Published: 11 December 2020 14:28 CET

How a refugee-run factory is helping the Netherlands meet its need for face masks

Like many countries, the Netherlands found itself short of medical face masks when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. File photo: Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP

This article is part of Changing the Narrative. Articles in this series are written by student or early career journalists who took part in The Local's training course on solutions-focused migration reporting. Find out more about the project here.

Why be dependent on factories on the other side of the world if you can produce face masks locally?

That’s exactly what Dutch entrepreneurs Jaap Stelwagen, Fleur Bakker, Johan Blom and Naz Kawan thought in March. The Netherlands, like many other countries at the time, was dealing with a big deficit of surgical face masks.

Stelwagen, who lived in China, together with his wife who is originally from China, called several people there to ask whether it would be possible to get material. Bakker’s sister, a KLM pilot, managed to get hold of a roll of melt-blown fabric that you need to make face masks, and brought it to the Netherlands on a plane full of other health equipment. Later that month, on one of the few flights that were running at the time, two face mask machines flew 7,000 kilometres to Amsterdam.

But who would operate them?

~~Refugee~~ Company, already had a sewing workshop and restaurants in place where people with a refugee background were able to acquire work experience. And yes, that is spelled correctly: the entrepreneurs of ~~Refugee~~ Company don’t want to focus on refugees, but on the work they do.

“As a response to the pandemic,” project spokesperson Peter-Paul de Jong explains, “we decided to set up a face mask factory: the Mondmaskerfabriek.” Located in the city of Arnhem, it mainly employs people with a refugee background to make surgical face masks.

“The project not only responded to the deficit of masks in Dutch healthcare,” de Jong explains, “but also provides people with a refugee background with work experience and knowledge about the labour market in the Netherlands.”

Firas al Naif, 33, is one of the employees in the factory. “I’m doing different tasks,” he says. “I for example have to make sure the masks are properly wrapped and check if the machines work.” It is all new for Al Naif, as in Syria, he worked as a biology teacher. “I wasn’t used to doing technical tasks. The first month was pretty hard, but now it’s going really well.”

The factory employs 24 people with a refugee background – with a contract. All but one of them also take part in an extra training scheme. “We have a paid four-hour programme next to work, in which we can improve our language and become more familiar with the labour market, and we make for example a CV, application letters, we see how you can find work,” says Al Naif.

The Mondmaskerfabriek puts 70 percent of its profit back into the company. “This way, we can employ more people, protect healthcare professionals and keep the production local,” they write on their website. The project was made possible by loans and donations from among others, Philips Foundation, Qredits and the Rabobank.

“What differentiates this project to others,” de Jong adds, “is that we have a unique combination of helping people with a refugee background and responding to a need of society.”

In 2019, 30 percent of the refugees in the Netherlands were working, an improvement from the year before when it was only 17 percent, according to by Divosa, an association of municipal directors working in social inclusion and employment issues.

Covid-19 might turn these positive developments around. “We warn for decreasing trends in 2020,” says Chrisje Meinders, spokesperson for Divosa. “Refugees are usually the first group to notice dips in the labour market.”

“The one thing I like most about this work is solving problems,” says Al Naif. “If there is a problem with the machine from China, I like to look for ways to get it working again.”

And there were other problems, de Jong explains. After the challenges of getting the right machines and material, the next problem arose: getting certification to create surgical face masks for healthcare professionals. In order to be used in the healthcare sector, the face masks have to be certified by a laboratory to say they meet strict standards. And that took some time.

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Al Naif thinks the factory where he’s working is a nice place. But it isn’t perfect. As the building is old, ventilation is a problem and it’s hard to get it up to the antibacterial standards, Bakker writes on the website. The location caused occasional deviations that stood in the way of the factory’s certification.

The project tried different ways to ensure the masks were up to medical standards, including sterilizing them with gamma radiation and setting up a special sterile production room within the factory with purified air and an antibacterial floor.

In mid October the certification was acquired and the factory started supplying the Dutch centralized point for healthcare products (Landelijk Consortium Hulpmiddelen or National Consortium of Resources), with which a deal was made earlier this year.

“That distinguishes the Mondmaskerfabriek from other projects from ~~Refugee~~ Company,” de Jong explains, “as we can use the profits to pay employees, instead of mainly relying on funds and donations.”

L to R: Firas, Efrem and Milad celebrating the mask factory's certification. Photo courtesy of Mondmaskerfabriek

“This project seems to do its job very well,” says Tesseltje de Lange, professor of Sociology of Law and Migration Law at Radboud University. “~~Refugee~~ Company creates work and prepares refugees for the Dutch labour market.”

And that can be hard. The main problem usually is communication. “Employers often overlook how much time it takes to work with refugees,” says de Lange, who researches the labour market integration of migrants and refugees. “Intercultural differences are often bigger than they think. Initiatives like this deliberately take the time to address these issues.”

Research she conducted in 2017 stresses the importance for refugees of finding work early, as finding work is always easier when you’re already doing something.

“Working in the Mondmaskerfabriek is different than working in a supermarket,” Al Naif explains. “Having colleagues from so many different backgrounds is nice, and the atmosphere and coaching is good.”

“I love how much I learned about technology,” he says. But he would rather be a biology teacher again. “When my Dutch is good enough, I want to go back to the classroom.”

Michal van der Toorn is a freelance journalist from the Netherlands. She graduated from the Erasmus Mundus Journalism Master’s, and has a special interest in radio, podcasts and conflict resolution.

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A cultural exchange programme for the ‘forgotten Spanish colony’

Some of the children participating in the programme experience health conditions caused by the tough life in the refugee camps. Photo: Sonia Clemente

In 1974, after pressure from the UN, Spain agreed to a referendum to accept the Sahrawis’ right to self-determination. But when Morocco, supported by France and the U.S., invaded the country, Spain abandoned the Sahrawis. Nowadays, 80 percent of their country is occupied by Morocco, and hundreds of thousands of its citizens are stranded in refugee camps in Algeria. The result is that people living in this region are denied the same rights given to other former colonies, such as the ability to claim Spanish citizenship.

Today, the fifth of the country that is not controlled by Morocco is known as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) and it is governed by the Polisario Front, recognised by 46 governments around the world, although none in the EU. In Spain, some local organisations and public figures campaign for their government to support the Sahrawi people.

“Spanish citizens have stood next to the Sahrawi people for 45 years because they understand that Spain has a political and legal responsibility with the Sahrawi people, but they see their political leaders incapable of amending this error. It is the great divorce in Spain,” Abdulah Arabi, the Polisario Front Delegate in Spain said, “Spaniards are holding a responsibility that belongs to their government.”

At the time of the interview with the Sahrawi Delegate, Abdulah Arabi expressed concern that they were closer than ever to a break of the truce. Two weeks later the truce broke. “We have generations that have been born in refugee camps waiting for the UN to apply their peace plan so their parents and grandparents can decide what they want to be.”

Photo: Sonia Clemente

Holidays in Peace

One of the most successful programmes trying to both improve the conditions of the Sahrawis in refugee camps and to bring awareness to the conflict is Holidays in Peace. It allows Sahrawi children living in Algerian refugee camps, in one of the roughest deserts in the world, to live in Spain for the summers with host families.

This programme allows kids to avoid the desert heat, and access medical treatment and check-ups. It also helps them to learn Spanish, the second official language of the SADR.

The programme began in 1976 with just a handful of children, and only three years later, 100 children spent their summers in Spain. In the 1980s the initiative gathered institutional support from the SADR government and several Spanish civil associations under the umbrella of “Friends of the Saharawi People.”

By the early 2000s, thousands of kids would travel every summer.

“In the good year before the 2008 crisis when the [Spanish] government donations were larger, we were able to bring up to 10,000 children every summer,” Arabi said.

Many of these children come back for several summers and stay with the same families again. When the children return to the camps, the host families often visit and send care packages. The associations also send vans full of supplies a few times a year to the camps.

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Raúl Bedrina, who joined one of the associations in Madrid, and later helped to create the Gdeim Izik association in the south of the Spanish capital, hosted a child for the first time eight years ago.

“It is not charity, it is solidarity. These children are the best ambassadors of the Sahrawi people, who share a common history with us,” he said.

Western Sahara is the only Arab country with Spanish as a co-official language. However, the language barrier is still a challenge for the children, as they only began studying Spanish around the same time that they travel for the first time.

“At that age, kids are like sponges, in two months they are fluent,” Bedrina said, “but we put in the effort, too. Every day for one or two hours before going out or to the pool, we would sit with a picture dictionary and helped him.”

Bedrina talks about the cultural shock the children suffer when they arrive. The first thing they want to do is call home.

“Our kid went to bed crying for days because he missed his family. It’s also very odd for them to see things like a refrigerator, and they keep checking to see if things are still cold,” he said. They are also used to much more independence, to just go out a run around without supervision “but if only because of traffic, that is not possible here.”

“The ties you, as a host family, establish with the family are very strong. They are sending their children to a house they don’t know, so they want to know you.” Many of the host families visit the camps to meet the Sahrawi family, and the families want to send their other children to the same host family. “Our kid was the one who sold us the idea to host his younger sister. He took us for a ride,” Bedrina remembers, laughing.

Each host family is assigned a Sahrawi family, and they get to know each other as part of the process.

These children are not orphans, they have families who love and care for them, and it has to be made clear to the host families that the children will come back to their families after the summer. There are other programmes for teenagers who come to study in high schools during the school year and who go back home for the summer, but it is a much smaller programme.

The 2008 economic crash affected the programme a lot. Local governments cut the funding given to each association and they found it harder to fundraise money during the year. Many families who had hosted kids in the past couldn’t host those years because they were suffering from unemployment or financial troubles.

Most host families are middle class and the weight of an added member in the household was too much for many of them. “Kids come with nothing,” Bedrina said, “you have to give them clothes, food, et cetera…”

Because of this, the number of years the children would travel was reduced from five to three, so more children could continue to travel. However, it still cut the number of children able to travel by more than half for some years. Things had started to improve in this respect, but then Covid-19 hit.

An outdoor prison

The conditions in the desert are very dire. “There is no vegetation, no water, and temperatures go higher than 50 degrees,” Arabi said.

Before Covid-19, there were two times a year where host families could travel to the camps, around Easter around Christmas. For Bedrina, and many families, although hosting a child has been quite an experience, nothing compares to visiting the camps, and seeing the conditions.

“All Westerners should go and see a refugee camp to open their minds about what is going on in the world. I have seen colleagues go there and feel completely overtaken by the injustice and the world would fall on them. It was too much for them,” he said. Bedrina has been three times to the camps, not only meeting the families but also interviewing women about their vision on the conflict for a documentary and bringing humanitarian aid collected in Spain.

Photo: Sonia Clemente

Bedrina described the camps where Sahrawis have been living for 45 years as “a giant outdoor prison. It is difficult to describe with words.”

“The first days there I thought I had a cold because I was having trouble breathing, but then I realized it was the sand dust I had been swallowing all day,” he said

David Pobes, another volunteer in an association also travelled by car to the camps to take donations gathered in Madrid. He lived with the family he had been in contact with. “You live with them, and you can see they have nothing. The homes usually have two rooms. Not two bedrooms, two rooms. There is no furniture and they sleep on the floor. While you are there you eat with them, cook with them, and clean with them,” Pobes said.

'Saved many lives'

While the main objectives of Holidays in Peace are building awareness of the Sahrawis’ situation, and to take the children away from the camps during the hot summers, one of the key aspects that have helped save lives is the access to better medical care and nutrition during the summer.

Healthcare is a scarce resource in the camps. “We have a Ministry of Health that guarantees health in all the towns in the camps. But the dispensaries are indeed basic,” Arabi said. When David Pobes visited one of the clinics in the camps, he was surprised by it: “in one room, they had an old gas refrigerator for insulin. That was the best technology I saw.”

The clinics are meant mostly for first aid. If it is more serious, the patient must go to the province hospital or the national hospital. If it is even more serious, they must be transported abroad. However, access to specialized medicine is rare.

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During the summers in Spain, the children get a full check-up with a blood test and access to specialists. “Thanks to these check-ups we have been able to save many lives of children who are now living a normal life, thanks to this programme,” Arabi said.

Spain has universal healthcare, meaning that the children can access the Spanish healthcare system upon arrival. Children in the camps suffer from hearing and sight problems because of the sandstorms. “You wouldn’t believe the stones that I have seen taken out of these children’s ears. Stones!” Pobes said.

When it comes to sight problems, the associations run fundraisers the entire year not only to cover the €600 flight but also glasses these kids might need. Some optometrists provide the glasses for free for these kids, but unfortunately, there are not enough.

Adapting to the pandemic

Due to Covid-19, the programme was cancelled for the first time since it began decades ago.

To alleviate the effects of not running the programme, the Polisario Front came up with an alternative list of events in the camps. During July and the first half of August children in the refugee camps have taken part in cultural and sports activities.

“We have done practically everything they would do here, such as medical check-ups, but, of course, conditions are not the same, as structures are fragile there.” Arabi said.

They took part in poetry and music workshops, football, cross country, and a programme of exchanges with older people who told them their life stories. They have been able to offer this version of the programme to all the children in the camps, around 9,000.

In August a group was taken to the liberated territories. It was the first time they could see them. Arabi said the programme was a bit rush, as they couldn’t be sure what the Covid conditions were going to be or if they would be able to do it at all, “but the results have been good.”

The plans for next summer remain uncertain, but the hope is that it will be able to return to its usual format, providing many children with a connection to a Spanish host family, language lessons, medical care and a break from life in the camps.

Thess Mostoles is a Spanish journalist currently living in the UK and reporting on international politics, war and conflict.

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