While we always focus on the journey of the students and staff whose lives are changing because of the Congo Peace School, this month’s update highlights physical, practical changes to the campus itself.
The global pandemic shows us what we have the power to do individually. How many of us started cutting our own hair, baking our own bread, managing online school for kids? (Hopefully not simultaneously.)
It also highlighted the power our individual actions take on when we bring them together collectively.
The Congo Peace School is a prime example of this power of individuals and collective community action. We've had individuals commit to leaps of growth, and individuals coming together to give monthly or annually to help meet the costs of a school that serves the most vulnerable.
This spring, Susan Saltz, in honor of Anita Saltz and the Gary Saltz Foundation, committed to funding the construction of three new preschool classrooms to host our partner PILA Global’s game-changing preschool program, known as The Nest: Congo. With Harriet Zaretsky’s (Dillon Henry Foundation) additional funding, the construction began this summer!
The two preschool classes of 22 students each (1: ages 4-5 and 2: ages 5-6) were previously housed in two of the main school building’s classrooms, with 22 students from Preschool 2 matriculating into first grade. Within a short amount of time, the first-grade teacher reported a clear difference in the students who had attended the preschool, which provides the pedagogy and tools for exploring curiosity and finding ones creativity and voice. The students from the preschool were more vocal and confident in asking questions, in exploring the subject matter with the teachers.
Photo Credit: PILA Global
With that in mind – our visionary leader Amani Matabaro saw the need for three preschool classes – so that all the 40 new incoming first graders would have benefited from a year of preschool. Having been a patron of the school and PILA Global programs from the beginning, when Susan Saltz learned that the classes needed a new home, as the main school expands this fall 2021 from 9 grades to 11 of its eventual 12, she committed the necessary funds.
We are honored to partner with organizations via grants (a thank you to Jewish World Watch for their most recent grant for this ongoing school year) and the Guardian Program via the Dillon Henry Foundation.
We couldn’t function daily without the ongoing giving of individuals – from $3 / month to $200 / month to annual gifts, you all play a vital role in the life of this community of students and staff, who are already influencing their families and communities, and will continue on as Peace Ambassadors for the nation, and world.
“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”
― Nelson Mandela
As the three classrooms neared completion, Amani gathered the community together. The Congo Peace School is a point of pride for Mumosho, and the community feels a shared ownership to protect it, honor its mission, and support it however they can.
Asking their thoughts on the school and its impact on the community as well as their commitment to it, Amani learned that the parents and neighbors wanted to ensure a campus that could grow with the school’s vision – specifically to build three more classrooms as a second level above the new preschool classrooms. With the Congolese curriculum, secondary students declare a major in their last few years in high school, and to accommodate more majors, which will also attract more boarding house students to create more local sustainable funding, more classrooms dedicated to additional majors are needed.
With the community promising labor hours and whatever they could contribute, in addition to Amani’s commitment via a personal loan, and his salary payment from a recent outside job working with Lisa Shannon’s Every Woman Treaty, they were able to find the funds themselves for the second story – and work began, to be finished with the roof, doors, and windows at the end of August.
Our next exciting news: clean energy! The solar panels were installed at the Congo Peace School, thanks to a partnership with GivePower Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to extending the environmental and social benefits of clean, renewable energy around the globe. In partnership with Nuru, a Congolese renewable energy utility, the installation, designed to support these children historically affected by violence, were made possible by Congo Power (founded by Alyssa Newman, an Action Kivu board member), an initiative backed by Google, and by Silfab Solar, which generously donated equipment.
There was a small glitch in the system’s converter that Nuru is currently solving, so the full spectrum of sun-sourced power is not yet being utilized at the school, but they are able to use the power selectively, specifically to host computer classes. Amani notes that the fight against digital illiteracy is a big challenge in many sub-Saharan African schools. Thanks to solar power, and to all of your support, we are fighting for digital literacy with sustainable means!
Photo credit: Esther Nsapu
As Amani noted in conversation in July 2020 with Robin Wright, “[With] solar equipment at the Congo Peace School … this will make a significant difference. It goes a long way with our vision of not harming our environment. If we want to stay nonviolent, nonviolent within ourselves. Nonviolent with our community around us. Non-violent with our environment.
“[Solar power] will enable us to power our computer and conference room and the dorms … this will make a big difference, if we stop using generators that are killing our environment. And the generator is costing us money to kill our environment: it is like violence, violence costs money to destroy the world. Yes, it is like hatred, it costs money to destroy what is around us. So the solar system … will make a huge and significant difference. It is going to translate our friendship with our environment.”
Not only will the boarding houses have power, allowing the Peace School to enroll students from nearby cities to live and study at this unique school and pay tuition that will offset the costs of local kids whose families cannot afford it, but the power affects the greater community, as the school will be able to offer more trainings and resources.
As we celebrate both the leaps made in new classrooms and new sustainable power, we also look to the needs as we grow the school from 9 grades this year to 11 in 2021 / 2022. Your giving is critical, and we are grateful.
The impact is clear when we see the freedom with which children, still burdened with so much trauma in their community, country, and world, are expressing themselves through dance, play, learning, and art.
Students dancing at the Congo Peace School – filmed by Esther Nsapu
Please share this update with your communities so that we can grow the family of donors as we continue to focus on local sustainability via farm to table meals, paying boarding students, and more.
$3 per month on Patreon pays for 3 backpacks a year. $660 per year or $55 per month covers the tuition costs of a student, including meals, uniforms, masks, and access to the library and computer lab. Click here to set up your monthly gift!
Thank you to our current partners for making this vision a reality!