LEWISTON — Only those who have lived in refugee camps on the Horn of Africa know what it’s like, and they have a special responsibility to help, said Dr. Abdifatah Ahmed of Atlantic Global Aid.

“A lot of Somali Americans, the Somali diaspora, are going back,” Ahmed said. “We are not waiting for the U.N. or the Red Cross to get back and help. It is our responsibility as the Somali diaspora to take the lead and help show the world.”

Ahmed, Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert and a group of local volunteers announced their plan to deliver medical goods and aid in December to refugee camps in Kenya and the Somalia capital of Mogadishu.

Under the heading of Lewiston-Auburn-based Atlantic Global Aid, the group is collecting unused medical supplies from U.S. hospitals and medical offices, Ahmed said. Members plan to fill a shipping container and accompany it to the Horn of Africa.

A bloody civil war in Somalia has sent thousands to the Kenyan camps on the two countries’ border. The situation was made worse this summer by one of the worst droughts in years.

“The victims here are mostly children and women,” Ahmed said. “The conditions are very sad. So many have set out, all the way from Mogadishu to the refugee camps. And many don’t make it.”

The group has set up a website, www.atlanticglobal.org, to take donations and is hosting a fundraising dinner Sept. 17 at the Lewiston Multi-Purpose Center.

Ahmed, a pharmaceutical doctor and managing pharmacist at the Topsham Rite-Aid, said he lived in the refugee camps in 1992, before his family emigrated to the U.S.

He grew up in Boston, later relocating to Lewiston. He also serves on St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center board of directors.

He remembered seeing boxes of aid covered with the U.S. flag when he was living in the camps.

“America has always been a place that helps,” he said. “But this is very personal to us, and it’s our chance to step up and help, as Somalis and Americans and Mainers.”

Members of the group took a small amount of aid with them this spring, visiting refugee camps in Kenya and setting up their first African office in Nairobi. They’ve developed partnerships with Masalani District Hospital in Kenya’s Ijara district and WomanKind Kenya, a northeastern Kenyan effort to help schools, women’s initiatives and community farms.

In Maine, the group is working with Scarborough-based Partners for World Health. That group is helping to collect medical supplies and nutritional supplements that will be taken to Somalia this winter.

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