By Rachel Banning-Lover, The Guardian
It’s unusual for a nursery worker to actually build a school. But in 1999 Deqa Khalif began to dream that she and some of the other diaspora families who had fled the Somali civil war eight years earlier might be able to do something for their country.
“My friends and I decided to pool our money to start a school back home,” the Camden-based nursery worker says now. “We wanted to give the community the idea that you don’t have to wait for a national government to rebuild – you can build schools, health clinics, prisons even – now.”
In 1999, together with 20 other families, she began to fund and build a primary school in the small Somali town of Galkayo. The school, small to begin with, has grown and grown and now includes a secondary school and an orphanage, and provides education for more than 1,000 children. Remittances from 500 families across 12 countries provide the $162,000 a year needed to keep it all going.
But two years ago, out of the blue as far as Khalif and her co-founders were concerned, Barclays Bank announced they would be closing all Somali money service business accounts (MSBs).
Simultaneously, the charity behind these schools, Read Horn of Africa, had both its Barclays and Lloyds charity bank accounts closed down, says Khalif. There were real concerns the school would close down, if they couldn’t keep sending money.
“It was very difficult, as we lost a number of our families who send money by direct debit while we tried to find another bank.”
In fact the storm had been brewing for a few years. In 2011 banking regulators in the US and the UK began to crack down on banks that did not have sufficient checks against money laundering in place. HSBC was fined £1.2bn for failing to carry out sufficient anti-money laundering checks on money bound for Mexico. Standard Chartered was fined £440m for breaching US sanctions against countries including Iran and Libya. Anxiety spread throughout the banking industry as it was made clear that hefty fines would be levied.
Read more: Cutting lifelines: ‘If we can’t send money home everyone suffers’
Source: The Guardian
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