Whether it is reading the tape measure in the Sewing Workshop or properly spacing vegetables on our teaching farms or measuring flour in our Baking Program, Action Kivu's Literacy Program is the entry point to all our work in vocational training! Here, women and girls denied a formal education learn to read and write and become literate in numeracy, giving them the tools needed to learn a new skill, and start a small business to earn income.
Read more stories of how your donation is an investment in the women and kids of Congo and how it changes lives: the life one more girl, one more student, one more woman who finds hope and passes it forward, helping to break the cycle of extreme poverty and inequality.
- Meet Sikitu and Neema, at work in the Shared Farm program. The women have been tending a compost pile made of grass, domestic waste, and soil for one year, raking it over every four to six months, depending on how fast it composts. 35 years old, Sikitu is the proud mother of eight, but two of her children died of malaria when they were 13 and 3. Sikitu never got the chance to go to school, and is now part of both our Literacy and OFFA program. Mama Sikitu works beside Neema, who at 18 years old is one of 9 children who did not get the opportunity for an education. Neema is also a student in the Literacy Program, the entry point for all Action Kivu’s vocational training courses.
- Meet Aimerciane, who graduated the Sewing Workshop in 2012, and is proud to report that with the sewing machine she received at graduation, she started her own business. Four years later, with weddings, special events, and regular customers, she averages earning $60 USD a week.
- Meet Adolphine, who is 60 and the mother of six. Two of her daughters are married, four of her children are in school, and Adolphine is now a student in Action Kivu’s Literacy Program.“Women did not have any right to go to school,” she says. “But I liked studies so much. I never lost hope that one day I would study.”