New People, New Actions, New Congo: Children's Christmas Celebration & New Year Resolutions

Christmas came a few days early for the kids in Mumosho, DRC, thanks to you, our family of supporters in the U.S. and around the world. Santa arrived in the form of our founder and leader, Papa Amani, as he is known to the kids, bearing bags of shoes and clothes for over 250 children, many for whom this is the only clothing they will receive for the new year. Older students, kids who have grown up in school because of Amani’s Education Assistance program, volunteered to help. They were eager to play their part, to pay it forward by giving their time to the organization that has helped them stay in school, to find the inspiration and practical help to follow their dreams, and to encourage the dreams of the younger students, like Orelie.Currently halfway through the first year at secondary school, Orelie has a vision for Congo, and created the slogan that Amani embraced for ABFEK, our partner organization: “New People, New Actions, New Congo.” Orelie’s favorite part of school is community, “when we come together as brothers and sisters during breaks, playing and singing.”Your resolution to partner with the people of Congo is already turning Orelie’s vision into reality. Through your support, over 400 children are attending school through our Education Assistance Program for vulnerable children; 15 teen mothers and their babies have housing and vocational training after being abandoned by their families because of rape; over 90 families are part of our growing animal husbandry program; 245 women are learning to read and write through our Literacy Program; 180 women are learning sustainable farming, growing food to sell and to feed their families on our two shared farms; 236 women have learned the skill and trade of sewing, starting their own businesses, earning income to feed and send their kids to school, helping to break the cycle of extreme poverty.Celebrating Christmas and the New Year, some of the kids swarmed the playground, legs kicking to swing high, hands gripping tightly as they spun in circles on the merry-go-round, watching to see who could roll an old tire the furthest and fastest. They stopped to eat a warm meal of rice, beans, and peas, served by the older students, including Brigitte, who joined the Teen Mothers Program three years ago after she was raped, pregnant before her 14th birthday.Shunned by her relatives and others in the village, Brigitte found compassion and love at the Mumosho Women’s Center. A strong young girl, Amani tells us, she finished the Teen Mothers Program empowerment sessions and decided to join the Education Assistance Program. Through our partner grant from Jewish World Watch, she was re-enrolled in school. Today Brigitte is in the fifth grade of secondary school, with one year to go before she graduates. Her goal is to attend university and law school, to defend and protect the oppressed, girls like herself only three years ago.Your support is creating real transformation in individual lives of the children and women of Congo, and creating a stronger community of generosity and trust. When Brigitte volunteered to serve food to the kids, she called them her brothers and sisters, because they accepted her and loved her.Celebrating Christmas and ringing in 2016 with new hope, the children in Mumosho, Congo send you their thanks.They took turns drawing, sketching, creating.  ''I am dreaming of becoming a pilot and that's why I am drawing a plane," says Borauzima Daniel.  "On board this plane I am sending my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to the Action Kivu supporters who are making a huge difference in my everyday life.'' Read more about the kids, women, and community we partner with in Congo:Meet Mamy in a video from our Sewing Graduation Day, 2015Meet Cikwanine, Nadine, & Chanceline – three teen moms who are back in school!Meet Claudine, and read her story of coming “back to life”Meet Grandma Mwayuma and see some of the children at playMeet Amani through the Enough Project’s “I Am Congo” video seriesMeet the goats in our animal husbandry program, Your Goat is My GoatTo partner with Action Kivu, click here! 

Investing in Congo: Sowing Seeds for Women Launching Small Businesses

With your support, Action Kivu is sowing seeds in Congo: literal seeds in our Organic Food for All Program, virtual seeds of education through our Literacy Program for women and Education Assistance for children, seed money for small businesses run by women.  And we are already seeing the harvest of lives transformed: women sharing stories of how they can support their families through their new sewing skills, feeding their families with vegetables grown on the farm, and starting small businesses with investments from people like you, our partners!The mother of five children, Namuto was abandoned by her abusive husband, and left to care for the kids on her own.  Having heard about the vocational training programs at the Mumosho Women's Center, she arrived, hoping to join the Sewing Workshop, to learn a trade to earn income to support her family. Upon learning that the training took 8 months, Namuto instead joined our partner ABFEK's Micro Finance Program, learning financial literacy and starting a small business selling smaller food items at the market: groundnut flour used  to season food, cooking oil, and palm oil. After paying back her loan, she recently joined the Small Business Seed Project sponsored by long-time Action Kivu / ABFEK supporters from Rhode Island and California.With $100 of seed money, Namuto purchased more small goods to sell, and works hard every day to ensure her children are fed daily and can go to school. Her third son is pictured helping her grind the groundnut to ensure they do not lose any customers that day.A donation to Action Kivu is an investment in the future of Congo, supporting our vocational, educational, and community building projects and helping a woman like Namuto start a small business so she can feed, clothe, and send her kids to school, transforming not only her life, but the future leaders of Congo! 

When I Grow Up: Donate to Gift Shoes & Clothes for Kids in Congo

[thermometer raised=4092.40 target=4000 width=150px align=left currency=$ alt=‘Thanks for the donations!’ trailing=false]Every year, Action Kivu raises money to create a Christmas & New Year's celebration for the kids we serve in Congo.  Once a year, kids who have next to nothing, who often have lost parents due to the poverty and disease and violence resulting from the long-term conflict in their country, are invited to a celebration.  At the party, over 300 children are fed a meal, and receive gifts of shoes and a set of clothes, sometimes the only ones they'll get for the year.  They are so happy, our partner Amani tells us, and we see it in their faces.Donate today, and mark "New Years" or "Christmas" in the note to seller section on PayPal.  $10 goes a long way: A simple gift of shoes, clothes, and a meal tells these kids that their lives matter, that their stories are heard, that people around the world are cheering for them!Not all are so goofy posing for the camera.  Rehema's face shows her determination to make her dreams a reality, and is taking her gifts of shoes, clothes, and an education very seriously. A little girl from a family of eight children, her parents could not afford to send her to school.  Enrolled in classes now, thanks to ABFEK (Action Kivu's partner in Congo), Rehema plans to graduate school and use her education to help other kids like herself, working for ABFEK!Donate today!  Thank you! 

Women Who Weave: A Bigger Market for Handmade Baskets When Congo Bans Plastic Bags

 The girls and women step inside the Mumosho Women's Center, take off their flip-flops, set their kids down on the floor to play, and gather up handfuls of colorful bright rope.  They watch and follow along to the basket-making teacher's advice, weaving the rope into gorgeous baskets to sell at the local market and in their villages.  For half a year, a class of women come together three days a week to learn the art of basket-making and marketing, so that, like graduate Chantal (pictured below), they can sell their art, and earn income to feed their families and send their kids to school.  Depending on the size of the basket, they sell from $3 to $8 dollars a piece.Many people agree, plastic bags are the bane of our modern existence.  While convenient, they are not only unappealing when they escape to get caught in trees or stuck in gutters, but they are terrible for the environment: According to a 2014 report from the Earth Policy Institute, "worldwide, a trillion single-use plastic bags are used each year, nearly 2 million each minute. Usage varies widely among countries, from over 400 a year for many East Europeans, to just four a year for people in Denmark and Finland. Plastic bags, made of depletable natural gas or petroleum resources, are often used only for a matter of minutes. Yet they last in the environment for hundreds of years, shredding into ever-smaller pieces but never fully breaking down."The government in Congo banned the use of plastic bags, and when that law takes effect, it will mean even more need for and better sales of these beautiful baskets!Read more about our work on our blog, and consider a monthly donation to partner with the women in our vocational training programs in Congo, from basket-making to sewing to literacy classes, your dollars make a difference, giving hope and empowering the girls and women with the means to change their lives.Read more:

• Meet Mamy in a video from our Sewing Graduation Day, 2015
• Meet Cikwanine, Nadine, & Chanceline – three teen moms who are back in school!
• Meet Claudine, and read her story of coming “back to life”
• Meet Grandma Mwayuma and see some of the children at play
• Meet Amani through the Enough Project’s “I Am Congo” video series
• Meet the goats in our animal husbandry program, Your Goat is My Goat

Meet Nshokano & His Goat + How to Tell the Difference Between a Goat and a Sheep

Meet Nshokano Patrick, and his goat."Our goat is our wealth," says Nshokano Patrick. "We'll bring back one of these small goats to ABFEC [Action Kivu's partner organization in Congo] and keep one small goat and the big goat. My mom has said she will sell our small goat for her to start a small business to make sure she can start taking care of us."Goats show good standing in the community in eastern Congo, as Amani explained to Action Kivu's leadership team: "If I want to buy a piece of land from you, we can count it in terms of goats.  If I want to immortalize our friendship, I give you a goat.  If that happens, our friendship is solid.  Valuable.  Through My Goat is Your Goat, the neighbors share the babies of the gifted goat. For a poor woman to have a goat, it gives her pride.  It means: ‘I am somebody in the community.’   It is social, community building.” The "pay it forward" model contributes to a stronger sense of community.  Amani points to Cate, co-founder of Action Kivu, to illustrate.  “Cate is keeping the goat, but I know the baby will come to me.  The goat owner is now accountable to the organization and to me.   The goat owner is now accountable to the organization and to me,” Amani repeats, to emphasize how important that is in a place where people have so little.$80 is the cost of buying one goat for a family in Congo, and Action Kivu is working to raise funds to buy two more goats a month to expand the program in Congo, which currently serves 540 people in area of 50,000.Want to know a little more about goats?  According to this piece on TreeHugger.com, published in response to the debate over whether the Chinese New Year was that of the goat, or the sheep, writer Melissa Breyer explained:  "While both hail from the subfamily Caprinae, sheep and goats diverge at the genus level and arrive as distinct species. Sheep (Ovis aries) have 54 chromosomes; goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) have 60. Sheep–goat hybrids – yes, a geep or shoat – do exist, but they are rare. Behold the baby geep below. Awww!"Breyer continues: "A main difference between the two is how they forage. Sheep are grazers; they ramble slowly eating short plants close to the ground. Goats are browsers; they look for leaves, twigs, vines, and shrubs. And their agility allows them to attain charming positions in pursuit of their forage...“Because they browse, goats spend a lot of time investigating things. They are forever nibbling on and eating things,” Cathy Dwyer, a professor at Scotland's Rural College, tells NPR. “So they have more exploratory, investigate behavior because of their feeding style. They appear to be more interactive with the environment, and they are very engaging animals.”We find them to be very engaging animals, too, changing the lives of the women, children, and families we work alongside in Congo! Consider partnering with the people of Congo through a monthly donation to Action Kivu to help us continue these programs.(Photo credit: [Top] Nshokano courtesy Amani Matabaro, ABFEK / Action Kivu, [Bottom] courtesy TreeHugger.com / YouTube)Save

Back to School: Lessons in Changing the Future of Congo

It's hard to tell who is more excited about the first day of school this year: the kids or Papa Amani, as the students in Congo call our partner in Congo.  Amani lights up when he talks about sending children to school, giving them hope for a better future and the means to pursue their goals and dreams.  He knows that educating children, and specifically sending girls to school, often denied education simply because of their gender, is one of the best ways to break the cycle of extreme poverty furthered by decades of war in this corner of Congo.  Thanks to a generous grant from Jewish World Watch, many of the children we serve in eastern Congo, kids who are orphans or whose families are unable to afford school fees and supplies, are back in the classroom this week!Amani often echoes Nelson Mandela's words: "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."We're thrilled to post our own Back to School photos.  Meet Cibalonza, who is six years old and so excited to begin her education, entering grade 1 in elementary school this year.  She's surrounded by the school kits each child receives: a school bag, a uniform (many sewn by the students and graduates of Action Kivu's Sewing Workshop), copy books, a pencil, two pens, a mathematical box, and a ruler.We're happy to share an update on Ntaboba. When he was six years old, Ntaboba, whose name means “no fear,” stepped on a live grenade in the jungle near his home in eastern Congo, mangling and twisting his leg, forcing him to walk with a metal pole for support, which further twisted his spine. Because of the injury, he often missed classes and fell behind in his education when he could not navigate the five kilometers to his school.Margaret Johnson and Betty Merner, two Americans visiting Congo with their friend Dr. Victoria Bentley of Empower Congo Women, met Ntaboba in Mumosho. They quickly connected to Ntaboba’s soft spirit and strong character, and were determined to do what they could to help him. Thanks to the emotional and financial support of these women and school kids they work with in Rhode Island, in 2012, Ntaboba received a surgery on his leg from Heal Africa in Goma, a hospital renowned as one of only three referral hospitals in the DR Congo. He continues to walk freely with "no fear," stepping into grade 2 in secondary school.Read more about our programs, and how your partnership and donations support life-changing work in Congo, here!Meet Mamy in a video from our Sewing Graduation Day, 2015Meet Cikwanine, Nadine, & Chanceline – three teen moms who are back in school!Meet Claudine, and read her story of coming “back to life”Meet Grandma Mwayuma and see some of the children at playMeet Amani through the Enough Project’s “I Am Congo” video seriesMeet the goats in our animal husbandry program, Your Goat is My Goat

Farm to Table to Classroom: Planting Food, Hope, and Change in Congo

When you plant a seed, you cannot be 100% sure that the plant will grow, our partner Amani says. Reflecting on the sustainable agriculture project that is changing the lives of the women working on the farm, Amani sees more than just food and income in the cabbages and tomatoes. “The power and the hope I see in the people in our programs makes me believe. Even when there is little water during the dry season, we get plants to grow!”It’s the dry season in Congo. When the winds blow this late in the summer, dust swirls off dirt roads, limiting vision to a few feet, if not inches. But in the valley, the shared farm is verdant. The women in the Organic Food for All (OFFA) program have been carefully tending the seedlings they planted in July, filling watering cans at the nearby creek to grow the crops that will feed their families and give them income from sales at the local market.It’s been an unending dry season in eastern Congo: years of conflict, fear sown by militias who use rape as a weapon of war and kidnap children to use as child soldiers, lack of medical attention or access to education, extreme poverty. In the midst of that ongoing season, Amani has seen hope grow. He has planted seeds: in schools and vocational and community building programs. He has seen women gather together to learn new trades, to form cooperatives, to earn income to send their children to school. He has seen men begin to change their views about women when they attend community education projects that focus on equal rights and the problem of domestic violence. He has seen the men celebrate when their wives start a small business. He has seen girls earn top scores when they head back to school, and has heard women ask why, why can’t they do the jobs men do, and then he sees them go do those jobs.“When you plant a seed, you cannot be 100% sure that the plant will grow. The power and the hope I see in the people in our programs makes me believe. Even when there is little water during the dry season, we get plants to grow!”“I tell you thisto break your heart,by which I mean onlythat it break open and never close againto the rest of the world.”― Mary OliverWhen you partner with Action Kivu, you continue to plant seeds of hope, that we see grow into changed lives!  Read their stories on our blog:

• Meet Mamy in a video from our Sewing Graduation Day, 2015
• Meet Cikwanine, Nadine, & Chanceline - three teen moms who are back in school!
• Meet Claudine, and read her story of coming "back to life"
• Meet Grandma Mwayuma and see some of the children at play
• Meet Amani through the Enough Project's "I Am Congo" video series
• Meet the goats in our animal husbandry program, Your Goat is My Goat

  

Kids Play in Congo: Pictures Worth Thousands of Words

A picture is worth a thousand words:Meet some of the kids in Mumosho, DRC, who take a break from their play to clown for the camera at the playground built through our partner's work.  How can we state in just a few words what it means for these children to have a safe space to just be kids, without worry for their safety (besides a scraped knee), playing with abandon?We are grateful for the grant from our partners in Sweden from Direktionen för Nytta och Nöje in Strömstad that created this playground in Mumosho, DRC, who connected with our work through Gunilla Hamne of Peaceful Heart Network.And grandma Mwayuma is grateful as well, to have a safe place to drop off her grandchildren while she goes to the Peace Market!If you want to partner with Action Kivu to create more safe spaces of play, education, and community in eastern Congo, read more about our work here on the blog, and click here to donate! 

Organic Food for All (OFFA): Photos From the Farm in Congo

We are so honored to partner with such amazing, strong women as those in our Organic Food for All program in eastern Congo. Below you’ll see photos from one of the two shared farms, this one for the dry season in Congo: June through late September. A nearby river and creek provide the irrigation system, where the women fill cans and bags to water the crops.Maria can't hide how proud she is to be the group leader on the‪ ‎Action Kivu farm in Mumosho, DRC, where they're expecting an incredible harvest.''I am thankful to God, I like being part of the Shared Farm program, being with others gives me hope and I feel stronger. I am praying to God to make this year's harvest better and more plentiful than last season," Maria told our founder in Congo, Amani Matabaro.The women are busy this summer, planting avocado trees, pawpaw trees, plums, and oranges.Read more about Action Kivu's programs in Congo:Meeting Mamy: Sewing Graduate Class of 2015 + OFFA FarmerSchool Stories from Congo: 3 Teen Moms on Bringing Back Lost HopeWeekly Community Meetings: Creating a New Congo Through Strength & VulnerabilityAnimal Husbandry: A Goat's Good Standing and Creating Community in CongoRobin Wright's Pour Les Femmes "Pajama Campaign" Changes Women's Lives in CongoConsider partnering with the women of Congo through a monthly donation!  As a 501[c][3], your donations are tax deductible in the U.S. (Our EIN is 27-3537799)

Meeting Mamy: Stories from Mumosho, Congo

Mamy is a member of the Class of 2015, graduating Action Kivu's Sewing Workshop with a Singer sewing machine and the tools to start her own small business.  Amani Matabaro, who started the Sewing Workshop when his cousins came to him in 2005 after they were raped and had no where to turn to earn income, caught up with Mamy last week at the Mumosho Women's Center.Mamy had a hard life from the start, orphaned at an early age. When she became pregnant after being raped, she thought life was worthless, that she was nothing.  But joining the Sewing Workshop and meeting her new sisters at the Women's Center, she has new hope for herself and her three year old son. Mamy smiled as she met Amani on her way to a wedding.  "Look at me, Papa Amani!  Now I have become somebody."Your support helps these women transform their lives, replacing despair with empowerment and hope.Meet Mamy in the video from the Sewing Workshop graduation, March 2015:"Before joining this program, I was worthless. I was nothing among all the people.  Because now, I can sew, I feel I am a strong woman. Able to school and feed my child. Contribute economically into the life of my family. I feel lifted up."If you want to partner with women like Mamy, who in addition to earning income from her sewing business, is also part of the OFFA (Organic Food for All) Program on our shared farms, click here to read more about Action Kivu, and consider a monthly donation!