There are currently over one million young East Africans working in Dubai, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. They go willingly – to escape poverty – but too often find themselves entangled in even worse circumstances. Dubai and Qatar primarily recruit young men (70%) to serve as waiters, cleaners, watchmen, and drivers, whereas migrant workers in Saudi Arabia are almost all female (90%), employed as domestic workers. The term “employed” is used here loosely since some of these 22 to 28-year-old women are stripped of their personal agency. Despite the difficulties, developing countries like Uganda receive over $100 million per month in migrant worker remittances to assist their families at home.

A common scenario goes like this: anxiety and anticipation fill *Maggie’s first-ever plane ride, from Kampala to Riyadh, where she hopes to earn enough money to support her mother and young son after her husband’s death due to malaria. The $250 USD per month government-mandated salary is more than she was making selling pumpkin and maize at the market, but paying her son, Timothy’s, school fees will still be a challenge, especially with funds transfer services extracting 15 to 18% of her remittances, every month! Nevertheless, Maggie was determined to try her best for her family. So, after deplaning, she looked for the agent from the labor export company. Other than her fellow Ugandan passengers, she didn’t understand the language spoken in the airport. Given that it was the fanciest place she’d ever seen, she was hoping her host family would provide well for her and her own family. After figuring out how to collect her bag of clothes and family photos, she was relieved to see the agency name on the sign held by Omar, whom she was told to look for. After a hasty introduction to the middle-aged man standing with Omar, she was rushed into the stranger’s car, hoping he was a good man. Their words in Arabic and Luganda went uncomprehended, so their journey, which stretched on and on, was mostly silent. Asking for bathroom stops involved making embarrassing gestures to her already impatient new employer.

She had no idea where they were going, but as the hours passed, so did signs of civilization. Hopes of connecting with a group of fellow East Africans was slipping away as she saw few people at all in the countryside they were passing through.

At last, they came upon a cluster of homes where her journey finally ended. Entering her host’s home, she was relieved to see another woman, then another, but their welcomes seemed lukewarm. There were children too – many of them. She eventually discerned which four belonged to one wife and which three belonged to the other. It was immediately made clear, even across the language barrier, that she was now responsible to feed and look after them all – and the house cleaning as well.
When would she have time for herself, and to stay in touch with her family? Maggie could see from day one that it would be a long two years. Her difficult days had some happy moments of connecting with the children, who offered their smiles and their help with Arabic. Their curiosity and playfulness reminded her of Timothy, who seemed even farther than a continent away. She also sorely missed Ugandan food, climate, and friendliness. Had she made a big mistake?

The answer became terrifyingly clear as the husband began to make sexual advances towards her – subtle at first – then ever more demanding and forceful. His abuse inflicted severe emotional, psychological, and physical wounds upon Maggie. Then, as if her burdens weren’t already unbearable, the fully-aware wives began inflicting their jealousy upon her. She had to get help and get out. The agency which had placed her was unresponsive to her request to be reassigned to another family, so what could she do but pray?

One day when the husband drove her half an hour to town for groceries, she met a Kenyan young lady in the Western Union line who told her about the migrant worker community she’d found on the My Guardian App. That night, with a glimmer of hope, she downloaded the App on her phone and found that hundreds of East African domestic workers were having similar struggles there in Saudi Arabia. She posted some of her story on the App’s forum and received several replies offering encouragement and advice. She read other stories of fellow Ugandans – even from her own district – who had found ways to improve their situations. Determined to find a way to provide for her family free of abuse and over-work, she pressed the App’s SOS button, sending her GPS coordinates and contact information to the My Guardian team.

They replied right away and promised to advocate for her with the placement agency. She was no longer alone! This renewed her faltering assurance that the Lord was with her and would deliver her.

But things actually got worse. A few days later, the husband stormed into the room and struck her. She took his rapid-fire Arabic shouting to mean that the agency had called to warn him about his abuse. He took her phone, forbade her to leave the house, and withheld her pay. A realization suffocated her soul: “I am enslaved.” But she didn’t give up. The My Guardian team had advised her to load the App onto one of the children’s tablets if her phone was seized. When she found her opportunity to do so, she learned that My Guardian had taken several steps to help her and had contacted her family. When sharing how her situation had deteriorated further, My Guardian promised to contact law enforcement right away. With a mix of fear and hope, she prayed and worked even harder. Two stressful and contentious days later, police officers arrived and set Maggie free. However, the husband was not arrested. After the half-day journey back to the city, she was given a hotel room for a few days while My Guardian arranged a flight to repatriate her to Uganda. Although she felt years older and traumas haunted her night and day, she was soon reunited with the people and place she knew and loved. My Guardian offered her affordable counseling services and options for safer work abroad should she decide to try it again.

Sadly, Maggie’s story is far too common according to My Guardian founder Dr. Charles Maina, PhD. Even worse stories are what moved his heart to provide the solution for mistreated migrant workers. Frequently surfacing were tragic videos of Ugandan girls jumping to their death, from high-rise balconies to escape abuse from their employers in Saudi Arabia. So, motivated by Christ’s compassion, Charles deployed his experience and education around innovation to create My Guardian’s unique solutions. Even as a young and small business, it provides an array of services to both migrant workers and the agencies that place them. My Guardian tracks, traces, and rescues those entrapped in labor and sexual slavery. They negotiate with employers for better treatment, help workers get reassigned to better host families, and repatriate the living or sadly sometimes, even mortal remains. They help the released to recover from their ordeals.

Charles isn’t content with helping individuals alone; he wants to be part of fixing the system, saying “I want to clean up the sector so that more East Africans can safely go abroad and work to lift their struggling families.” He’s co-creating with the King to heal a broken world. The systemic innovations that My Guardian offers include helping East African labor export companies to find legitimate Middle Eastern agencies which thoroughly vet employers and hold them accountable to treat employees well. He also helps migrant workers to set up bank accounts at East Africa’s largest bank into which they can send their remittances. The bank’s referral fees help My Guardian to make their own fees affordable for migrant families. Always innovating, Charles is now developing a low-cost remittance company that will be integrated into their App. In addition to another income stream to make the business viable, this will add another layer of relief for suffering migrants.

Charles could easily have focused on maximizing profits in his coffee export business rather than investing those profits along with his skills, time, creativity, and network into this venture to serve the vulnerable. Like the Good Samaritan, Charles was moved with compassion to take action. One saw an injured man on the road and the other saw videos of girls like Maggie in distress. They both diverted time and resources to transport the suffering out of danger. Charles feels an affinity to the innkeeper in that parable of Jesus, saying: “his core business was hospitality, but he was flexible and kind enough to go beyond to provide hospital care.” Similarly, Charles let his heart break for the broken, then mobilized all of his resources to bring healing. After all, this parable, and indeed every Kingdom business, is about laying down our own plans to love our neighbors in need. Are you moved with the King’s compassion? Who is the Maggie that your business is called to uplift?

Case study article written by Evan Keller, the CEO of creating jobs https://creatingjobs.org/