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Cindy Medina doesn’t want to be a refugee. She still dreams of returning to Venezuela, where she has lived for 22 years, but the crisis that has ravaged her country keeps that from becoming a reality.

"I had no job and my kids and I we were starving. We only ate cassava and my son was undernourished.”

Using the little money that she borrowed from family, she fled the country. She and her children spent two days walking the trails from Caracas to Maracaibo, and eventually fleeing across the border to neighboring Colombia.

“That trip was terrible. My children had no food to eat. My children and I were threatened on the trip because I did not have money to give to the people helping us across the border.”

Today, Cindy and her children are taking refuge in Colombia, like the estimated one million others who fled the oppressive regime. They are staying with a friend and it is not good. They are sleeping on cardboard on the floor, with a couple of sheets. Today just get by, Cindy sells cardboard and bottles.

Soon, Cindy and her children will have to fend for themselves, and she will be out on her own. She is scared.

“Thank God we are in Colombia now and not in Venezuela, but things are very difficult here. Sometimes I have to go out and beg on the street so that my children do not lie down without eating.”

Back in Venezuela, many Venezuelans had jobs good livelihoods. Cindy was a manicurist, but as a refugee in Colombia she does not have the tools to work. She is looking for jobs in the beauty parlors, but opportunities are few and far between. To help refugees, 400 refugees, including Cindy, are receiving cash assistance to cover basic living expenses. This form of assistance is highly effective and efficient, and it helps return dignity to people who have had it stripped from them due to a humanitarian crisis.

Refugees never want to flee their homes, their families, or their lives they have built. They flee because they are forced to leave…they have no other choice. Many just like Cindy want to return to all that is familiar to them.

"I want to go back to Venezuela. I want to go back to my home. I and part of that country and it is in my heart, and my children are Venezuelan. I do not want to stay in Colombia because in my country I have everything. Here, I have nothing.”

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