Help build a school for orphans at Nyabunkungu in post-conflict DR Congo
Nyabunkungu is a village of 1,300 people in the Walungu territory of the South Kivu Province in eastern DR Congo. Despite that villagers there are recently returned people from a decade long warfare and civil strife (1996 to 2006), they have extended their generosity to the most vulnerable ones, especially orphans, who lost their parents from civil strife and HIV-AIDS epidemic. More than 120 foster families in the Nyabunkungu village are providing for, and taking care of, as many as 380 orphaned children. People of good will from Nyabunkungu village have gathered, ever since 2001, into a local initiative organization, called CEOL, Centre d’Encadrement des Orphelins Locaux, to put the orphaned children back into school to acquire fundamental education and to learn a craft such as sewing, carpentry, masonry or red brick making, animal husbandry and gardening. Also the Nyabunkungu villagers have built a makeshift school of 10 classrooms, whose walls and roofs are made up of banana leaves. Of course, these classrooms leak. Such classrooms do not put the children into a suitable learning environment (See picture).
The Mugangu Foundation (FONDAMU), which is a DRCongo charityy, has now teamed up with the Nyabunkungu community and CEOL to improve the learning conditions of these children and later on the living conditions of their foster families. Also FONDAMU will support the formulation of suitable curriculum to include leadership and entrepreneurship skills for the orphans, the widows, women victim of rape, and all the vulnerable people in Nyabunkungu. This effort will also cover the two neighboring localities of Nyabunkungu in Ngweshe tribal chiefdom; that is, Irongo (21,163 villagers) and Nduba (20,144 people) as of the December 2004 census, which was made after displaced people had started to return to their home villages.
Hence FONDAMU is launching an appeal to build a suitable school for these orphaned children with sturdy material, with foundations of rocks, red brick walls and tin roofs. FONDAMU started in June 2008 to build the first classroom toward a 10 classrooms complex for these children in Nyabunkungu. Also these classrooms, fitted with photovoltaic batteries will be used in the evening for adult learning sessions, especially widows, women victim of rape, and other vulnerable people in Nyabunkungu and vicinity for community empowerment programs.
The first estimates for the construction of one classroom are US $6,000. Hence the whole complex will need US $60,000. Villagers from Nyabunkungu have accepted and are contributing rocks and sand to mix with cement to hold together the rocks and the bricks for walls.
Please be part of this effort to encourage and empower foster families and the orphaned children in Nyabunkungu for a suitable learning environment and an education to help them become self-reliant. Let’s join FONDAMU and CEOL to assist Nyabunkungu villagers in building a school for orphans in the post-conflict DR Congo. One may read more about this school construction and skills for the orphans at the following URL: http://fondamu.org/ruralprojects/skillsforchildren.html
** THIS PAGE HAS BEEN EDITED BY THE GIVEMEANING PROJECTS TEAM**