In "Stolen Childhoods," Save the Children reports that one in every four children, at least 700 million children worldwide, have had the promise of a full childhood brought to an early end. "The reasons vary from extreme violence and conflict, often driving families from their homes; early marriage and pregnancy; child labor; poor health; malnutrition and food insecurity; and not having the chance to go to school." The Democratic Republic of Congo, where Action Kivu invests in the communities of eastern Congo, ranks 162nd, the 11th in the worst of the world.We see so many of these children where we work in Mumosho, kids denied an education because of poverty, malnutrition and child labor in families desperate to survive the day. In response to these horrifying facts, we offer educational assistance, with the plan to open the first Congo Peace School (more on that soon), we invest in the lives of the mothers, providing vocational training and job skills to earn the income to break the cycle of extreme poverty, and a playground space for kids to be kids.Join the movement! Learn more about Action Kivu, and consider donating monthly: we need your support to sustain and grow our programs investing in the kids of Congo.
Now You're Speaking My Language: Connecting in Congo
Action Kivu’s Executive Director Rebecca Snavely recently returned from visiting Congo and all the programs our partners support. She writes here about the joy of finding shared understanding despite language barriers.)I’d spent a half hour repeating the few words I knew in Swahili and Mashi, the local dialect: “Jambo!” to greet the girls and women in Action Kivu’s Sewing Workshop, and “Coco!” to thank them for allowing me to wander around their space, my face half hidden behind a camera, leaning in to take their photos.They started to tease me, repeating Jambo! Coco! and laughing. I made a mental note to learn a few phrases in Swahili before my next trip to Congo. Koubde, a slight, older man who teaches embroidery and also repairs the pedal-powered sewing machines tinkered with one machine, tried to explain in French what he was doing. The words mechanic and machinist sound almost the same in English and French, and both our eyes lit up at finally understanding each other. The whole room broke out in joyful laughter.
“Now you’re speaking my language” generally refers to being on the same page, having similar tastes in politics or movies. It reflects back on how it feels to understand someone, and more so, to be understood.Interviewing the girls in Action Kivu’s Sewing Workshop, many of them had felt illiterate on their first day. They didn’t know anyone, and they didn’t speak the language of sewing – they didn’t know how to operate the pedal to make the machine run, or how to thread the needle, and they were afraid they would not be able to learn. Many of them had no classroom experience with a teacher: denied an education because of their gender and poverty, they were unaccustomed to the sewing trainer’s commanding tone.Weeks passed, and the girls were all speaking the same language. It sounded like scissors slicing through fabric, needles piercing their path through the brightly colored cloth, laughter at stories shared over the rhythmic sound of their feet pressing the pedals. Stories that gave each girl the glimpse that they were not alone. Each story was unique, based on the life of each girl or woman, but the same themes ran through all. Denied an education because of extreme poverty. Raped and impregnated. Abandoned with a baby. Unsure how to obtain the good life – that of being able to feed oneself and your child, and send them to school to stop this cycle. Speaking the same language, they were understood, and realized they were not alone.
Growing Food and Community in Congo: We work faster together! We're like family
Mapendo and Faida share a plot of farmland in Action Kivu's Organic Food for All Program."We work faster together! We're like family."Learn more about Action Kivu's work in growing food and community and combating malnutrition here.
Sisterhood: Together We Feel Stronger [Congo]
In Swahili, Mwamini means trusted, believing. "I live my name," Mwamini says. "Without believing, it would have been impossible to graduate from the Sewing Workshop."Mwamini was forced to quit elementary school in the 4th grade, her family unable to afford school fees for their 6 children. "Sewing is a passion for me, I wanted to do it for a long time," she says. "I feel proud and unique when I make fashion."Her father built the small structure for shade where Mwamini, Claudine, and Noella run their sewing co-op along the main road, running their business with the pedal-powered Singer machines they received when they graduated."I work in a co-op to promote unity and sisterhood. Together we feel stronger."
Be the change that you wish to see in the world. (Gandhi)
Start with Love: Sewing Student Iragi on Raising Up Good Leaders
Make a dress for me, Iragi asked her sister, Francine, who had just graduated from Action Kivu’s Sewing Workshop and set up her new Singer sewing machine in a room in their home.Francine didn’t have time, so Iragi decided to join the Class of 2017, and make her own dresses. The first day she arrived at the Mumosho Community Center, she saw so many choices of skills to learn, she wasn’t sure what to choose.“I started with basket making, but after mastering that in three months, I decided to challenge Francine. I wanted to become a better seamstress than my sister.”Before starting the classes, Iragi explained, she knew some of the girls, but they had nothing in common, nothing to talk about. But now, we are more than family. We lean on each other.Iragi didn’t hesitate to answer when asked what is unique about the Mumosho Community Center: We don’t have to pay! We learn for free. And then, at the end, you give us a kit to start our lives.
With so many people living in extreme poverty, the chance at a free education and vocational training is critical. “The trainings are becoming a source of hope here,” Iragi says. “I will professionalize what I learned. I plan to graduate, and move somewhere else to start a business where there are more people working. But I will be smart about it, save money to buy equipment, to start a co-op.”Iragi lights up when asked about her goals. Now 20, she wants to finish school: impregnated in her fourth year of secondary school, she had to quit. Her baby is 11 months old, and is looked after by other women at the Center while Iragi is in class. “I need to go back to school,” she says. Then there would be no limit to what she could do: “Imagine having a secondary diploma, a sewing co-op, and making baskets? I could be a teacher!”“If girls and women are given the chance, given an education, we can change the future of Congo,” Iragi says. “We have to start within ourselves. If there is no love in ourselves and our families, the government, the leaders, will not love, as they are just people, raised up in our homes, our families.”To invest in this work of equality and raising up a generation of peace-builders, click here.Learn more:About CongoAbout Amani's vision of a legacy of integrity[video]About Action Kivu's Literacy Program
Combatting Malnutrition in Congo: Organic Food for All
2 million children in Congo are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition and emergency levels of morbidity and mortality in 2017. You can help change that. 
The women receive instruction in sustainable farming before applying the teaching on the shared farm, and taking home seedlings from the nursery to grow in their own gardens.
An Education: From Star Student to Teacher [Congo]
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.”
Action Kivu in 2016: A Look Back at Hope in Action
As we peer into a new year with all the unknown and expectation it holds, we also take a moment to reflect on this last year, and invite you to join us for a short journey to Congo. Because of your partnership and investment in Action Kivu, women like Faida and Ernata are able to start small businesses, earning income to feed their children and send them to school. More families are receiving goats as our animal husbandry program grows, and more girls and women denied an education are learning to read and write and acquire skills to launch new businesses in sewing and farming and bread-making.When you take action by investing in hope, you are the change we need in this world, and we are grateful. Please take a moment to connect with the kids and women in our Congo community, and share with your friends, family, and colleagues to let them know why you are investing in the lives of the people of Congo.Happy new year from our family to you and yours!
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Joyeux Noël | Merry Christmas from the kids of Mumosho, Congo
The weather gifted the kids of Congo with a dry day in the midst of rainy season this Christmas Eve, and our Action Kivu family of donors gifted the kids with shoes, clothes, and a holiday meal of rice, beans, and a banana. The kids send their wishes for our beloved community to have a Merry Christmas, a happy New Year, and wish for the Congolese people a new year of stability and new hope.Borauzima, pictured above, is the only of her family of 7 kids who is able to attend school. In the 4th grade of primary school, she is always at the top of her class, and dreams of teaching French as a university professor. When she learned what her tee-shirt says, she smiled, saying: That is what I want! To shine like a star.In Alice Walker's book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For, Walker writes: "It was the poet June Jordan who wrote 'We are the ones we have been waiting for.' Sweet Honey in the Rock turned those words into a song. Hearing this song, I have witnessed thousands of people rise to their feet in joyful recognition and affirmation. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for because we are able to see what is happening with a much greater awareness than our parents or grandparents, our ancestors, could see. This does not mean we believe, having seen the greater truth of how all oppression is connected, how pervasive and unrelenting, that we can 'fix' things. But some of us are not content to have a gap in opportunity and income that drives a wedge between rich and poor, causing the rich to become ever more callous and complacent and the poor to become ever more wretched and humiliated. Not willing to ignore starving and brutalized children. Not willing to let women be stoned or mutilated without protest. Not willing to stand quietly by as farmers are destroyed by people who have never farmed, and plants are engineered to self-destruct. Not willing to disappear into our flower gardens, Mercedes Benzes or sylvan lawns. We have wanted all our lives to know that Earth, who has somehow obtained human beings as her custodians, was also capable of creating humans who could minister to her needs, and the needs of her creation. We are the ones."In this season of giving, if you feel moved to connect with the women, kids, and communities Action Kivu partners with in Congo, please take a moment to read more stories on our blog to learn how your donation is an investment in community building programs that are bringing new hope to women long denied equal rights and access to an education through our Literacy Courses and Vocational Training Programs, as well as life-transforming work in HIV / AIDS prevention, sustainable farming training, animal husbandry, and education assistance for kids like Borauzima.
We are grateful for all our partners who donate annually or on a monthly basis - thank you! We feel surrounded by the power of people reaching out to care for each other in this holiday season and into the new year.
Seeds of Hope - Planting Cabbage and Peace [Congo]
I've just arrived from Mumosho, our founder Amani reports. I am so happy to have spent time with this new group working on the shared farm near the Women's Center today. They are continuing to learn new agricultural techniques, skills they use to improve the harvest through organic fertilizer. They had sprouted the cabbage seeds down in the marsh farm to plant today in the farm next door to the Women’s Center. Today this group is so happy, and so am I, to plant these cabbages.
Planting the cabbage and seeds today is parallel to planting peace: they need to be tended to every day, as people need to work for peace every day, says Amani.
Through Action Kivu's shared farm program, Organic Farming for All [OFFA], women and girls who have been denied an education are learning sustainable farming, growing food to feed their families and to sell at the market. Those who have been given a goat through our Animal Husbandry program, My Goat is Your Goat are able to transform their goat's feces into fertilizer.Sikitu and Neema pause to explain how they use organic fertilizer. 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.
Nsimire and her sister Lelo load organic fertilizer from the compost pile that is ready to use. Neither had the chance to go to school for lack of support, and are so happy and committed to learn more agricultural techniques to acquire new skills.
The girls and women receive some specific training from Mukengere Bienvenu, a student graduating from the Evangelical University of Africa (UEA) in Bukavu in the field of Agronomy. Fresh from the classroom, he brings new energy to the farm, teaching the latest skills.
Planting seeds and small plants in the soil symbolizes the hope that we plant, knowing we will harvest it in the future.~ Amani Matabaro, Founder
Read more about how we are planting seeds of hope and peace in Congo on our blog, and consider supporting this life-transforming work today! A monthly donation is an investment in the future of Congo, and ensures the sustainability of projects like our Organic Farm for All and Literacy Program.