Welcome to the first-ever Congo Peace School graduation! (Please be sure to follow us on Instagram & Facebook for even more videos and photos - @actionkivu)
On a hot, humid July day in South Kivu, Congo, Amani Matabaro saw a portion of his dream for peace realized at the first-ever high school graduation for the Congo Peace School students. Amani’s vision for the Congo Peace School was conceived over a decade ago, when he was traveling around eastern Congo working as a translator of stories of trauma and paying witness to deep psychic and physical wounds from years of war and extreme poverty in his country.
On this day, he was greeted not with tears of pain, but with cheers and ululating.
Please watch this video in which Congo Peace School's and Action Kivu's Founding Director Amani Matabaro is greeted with cheers by the community members celebrating the first CPS graduation, and I (Rebecca, the U.S. ED), while filming it, am overwhelmed with emotion and forget that I'm going to post said video and say: "I'm already crying, Amani, how am I going to speak?" Listen to his response. (I did.)
There weren’t enough seats in the Peace School auditorium for the community members who didn’t have a direct tie to a specific graduating student, but feeling a deep connection with the school, they crowded around the doors and windows during the ceremony, mobile phones angled through open windows to capture the historic moment. There were four of us U.S. guests accompanying Amani to the first-ever Congo Peace School graduation, an emotionally overwhelming experience as we observed from the side the joy and anticipation of the crowd, the fidgeting selection of younger students who were honored, five per class, as the top of their respective grades.
Amani asked us each to speak to represent all of you, our family of supporters who made this dream a reality. Ariel Handelman, on the board of the Dillon Henry Foundation, the Congo Peace School’s founding partner and reason the campus was able to be built, invoked the legacy of one of the continent’s many inspiring leaders, Nelson Mandela, reminding the students of the power of education to change the world.
Another of the continent’s visionary leaders is our own Amani Matabaro, who stood before the graduating class in their dark blue gowns and mortar board caps, and said:
“I am talking to you this morning because despite your frustrations, despite your fears and despite your difficult and traumatic experiences due to living amidst an armed conflict, you have remained standing up fighting and believing in the power and beauty of your dream! The eldest among you is 20 years old but the armed conflict which tears and rips the eastern part of the DRC is almost 3 decades old, 27 years. Despite all of that, you have not accepted to be swallowed up by fear and anxiety – you have continued dreaming and believing in yourselves.
I know you, I know your dreams, I know where you are coming from, I know the long journey you have taken to be here today, and it’s because of the power of dreaming and remaining resilient. Martin Luther King is our role model and inspiration, he had a dream. Always remember [his words]:
‘If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run, then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.’
Dear graduates, keep dreaming and believe in the power and the beauty of your dream!
”
After each graduate’s name was called, and we wrangled them into tossing their caps in the air, a special celebratory lunch was served.
The following Monday, many of the students were back at the school for summer computer class, and I spoke with Rosalie, now a high school graduate, about what graduation day was like for her. “The graduation day was an unforgettable day for me. It was a day not like the other days,” she shared, talking about how amazing it was to be surrounded by the community and her fellow students, everyone celebrating this accomplishment.
Rosalie is a student whose story we’ve been amplifying since we met her and her brother in July 2018, just over a month before they started as two of the first cohort of Congo Peace School students. When we met that July, Rosalie’s parents had died only a few days before from AIDS, and she was in deep grief. Speaking with her over the years is an inspiration in the power of healing-focused pedagogy (click the link below to look back at part of her ever-unfolding story). Now, Rosalie’s drive to make a better world is strengthened with a bedrock of education rooted in peace for nonviolent conflict resolution.
Each secondary student in the Congolese curriculum chooses a major offered by the school, and Rosalie chose Social Techniques, which translates for us in the U.S. as a social worker. While she wants to go to university, she is equipped with the skills she needs to start work now in service to her community. The Congo Peace School adds an extra layer of expertise for these students, as a major problem is malnutrition, and Rosalie and her fellow students have learned regenerative farming at the Peace School’s two farms!
Even before graduation, Rosalie was acting as a social worker, addressing an issue she is most concerned about – girls marrying too young. She shared that she had met with a group of 10 teens who had married for various reasons, often to escape extreme poverty, got pregnant almost immediately, and their young husbands left them, many saying they were traveling to find work in a mine, and never returning. She wants these girls, most of whom were kicked out of their husbands’ families and returned to their own as single mothers, never to give up on their future, and share their stories with younger girls to encourage them to find a way to get an education (not easily available) or training for work to avoid a teen marriage.
“I am here to encourage younger girls because education can change everything, it can change your future,” she said. “I know that at the beginning of something it is difficult. I will use myself as an example, because as I was growing up the fear I had, thinking it is difficult to get an education, go to school, work hard young girls, have self-confidence, and God will give you what you need.”
Your support of this school is changing lives, lives like Rosalie’s, and creating the ripple effect of positive peace as she and her fellow students, and the staff at the Congo Peace School, continue to educate others on what they’re learning. We couldn’t do it without you, and as we aren’t fully funded, we also ask that you spread the word! A commitment to giving monthly or annually makes a lasting impact. Click here to learn more!
From Samantha & Kevin Poe, two of Action Kivu’s family of supporters who traveled to Congo for the graduation: “Witnessing the first Congo Peace School graduation was an incredibly moving and hopeful experience. In a region struggling with poverty and political instability, the graduation showed the power of visionary leadership, dedicated staff, energized students, and a committed community of support locally and across the globe.”
From Ariel Handelman, who joined us representing the Dillon Henry Foundation: “Words can't really express the emotions and overall experience of attending the first graduation of the Congo Peace School, especially as the representative for the Dillon Henry Foundation. Beyond the physical representations of success, the beautiful campus, the regenerative farm teaching lifelong skills - there was this graduation. So many of us may take for granted a high school graduation, but in this context, it is impossible to do so. I celebrated their success with them, I felt a sense of gratitude to be allowed to witness this moment, to be let into this special space during this momentous time, and to share this celebration with these students and family.”
In our next newsletter: The stories and amazing images from the sculpting art class Ariel taught at the Peace School, more student stories from the up & coming senior class, and more on the computer training.
As we see all of you as family, part of what Martin Luther King Jr. described as being “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” we ask for your prayers for the family behind the Dillon Henry Foundation.
Steve Henry has been in the hospital for almost three weeks with multiple health problems after an infection, and we ask that you hold him, his wife Harriet and his daughter Taylor and son-in-law Jace in your prayers, whatever form those take. Steve’s beautiful heart and subsequent actions have influenced so much good in the world, and we want them all to feel surrounded by our network of love and peace as they, and all who know and love Steve, move through this.
LINK: Rosalie’s story prior to graduation - https://www.actionkivu.org/blog/rosalies-story-amp-charlenes-studies-march-2022
Congo Peace School Class of 2023 Processional
Amani and the Congo Peace School Class of 2023
Photos by Joan Baptista Ndenzako
In gratitude for your partnership that helped get us to this amazing milestone,
Rebecca Snavely
Action Kivu, Executive Director