Thank you for continuing to give your attention to the people of Congo.
As we noted in our earlier post, the Congo Peace School student body and staff immediately began a response to the Ebola outbreak by engaging in safety and prevent-the-spread protocols as best they can, but we need to wire emergency funding to help ensure the most stringent care. If you can make a gift towards this need, please donate here, and note “Ebola” or “emergency” in your donation.
New needs have come up, as expected. As the Peace School prepares to host the national exams, the staff is assessing the wear and tear on water pipes that need to be fixed for maximum sanitation and safety.
Thanks to an $8500 gift from our preschool partner Nest Global and donors like YOU, we are halfway to $25,000 in support of a broad emergency response, including necessary water pipeline improvements and life-saving needs. Match these generous gifts to help us continue to support students and families during these challenging times.
That funding will serve not only the 600+ students and staff who are daily engaged at the Congo Peace School campus, but their families and surrounding community of more than 80,000, as they take their education about health emergencies in large populations (acronym HELP - something our Founding Director Amani Matabaro was trained in at Johns Hopkins University). Education about how Ebola is spread is critical to stop this from escalating, and part of our needs include printing flyers and posters to reach those in surrounding rural communities.
The people of eastern Congo are already terrorized by the ongoing violent occupation of armed militia – which in turn creates greater risk of spreading Ebola as people flee their homes from violence. Reliable water supplies allow frequent handwashing with soap, the cleaning of contaminated surfaces and safe disposal of waste. The local health facilities treating Ebola patients generate large amounts of contaminated waste such as personal protection equipment, and adequate water is is essential for disinfecting equipment, and laundering protective clothing. In villages, clean water will prevent cholera outbreaks, dysentery and other waterborne diseases that can overwhelm an already fragile health system.
Ebola update:
"On Monday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, ... has said the Ebola outbreak is outpacing urgent efforts to scale up a response adding that responders were "playing catch-up'.
"Ebola has also been reported in DR Congo's North and South Kivu provinces, as well as in neighbouring Uganda, where there have been seven confirmed cases." (SOURCE: BBC)
Thank you for your partnership in this life-saving and world-changing work.
In gratitude with our Congo Peace School founding partner The Dillon Henry Foundation,
Rebecca Snavely and Amani Matabaro
Executive Director Founding Director
