Teach 4200 women in the Congo (DRC) basic literacy

Teach women literacy in Africa

Summary

We will teach women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo how to read and write. Using these skills, they will participate in the reconstruction of their communities and establish peace in the DR project reportread updates from the field

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Received $5,344 from 73 donations from people like:

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More Information About this Project

Project Needs and Beneficiaries

Over 30 years of war has shattered the DRC’s infrastructure, economy, and ability to provide basic services such as education. Once a woman learns to read and write in our program, she can run her own business, join a woman’s cooperative and pass her literacy skills on to her children. We are helping women not just to live but to the thrive.

Activities

As seen on 60 Minutes, our program teaches women literacy and writing skills. Program graduates have become businesswomen, farmers and community leaders; supporting our conviction that stronger women build stronger nations.

Funding Information

Total Funding Received to Date: $5,344
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $183,655
Total Funding Goal: $189,000

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).

Resources

Why this Project is Important

Potential Long Term Impact

Creating a literate society in the DRC is a way of engaging women in creating lasting change and stability within the country. If we can stabilize the women we serve, they can in turn help stabilize their communities and their countries.

Project Message

"I feel like I am someone important. The recognition that I have been given today has made me realize that I am a valuable member in my community."
- Honorata, participant in the DRC program

Who is Running This Project

Contact

Shannon O'Donnell
Online Marketing Manager
4455 Connecticut Ave NW
Ste 200
Washington, DC 20008
United States
202-737-7709
Email:

Project Sponsor

Women for Women International

Organization

Women for Women International
4455 Connecticut Avenue Suite 200
Washington, DC 20008
United States
202.737.7705
http://www.womenforwomen.org

Where this Project is Located

Country

This project is located in Congo, Democratic Republic of theCongo, Democratic Republic of the and can also be found under EducationEducation.

For more information about Congo, Democratic Republic of the, read the Human Development Report on Congo, Democratic Republic of the or the Wikipedia entry for Congo, Democratic Republic of the.

When this Project was Updated

Last Updated

This project was last updated on February 10, 2010.

Date Added to GlobalGiving

This project was added to the GlobalGiving project catalog on August 17, 2007

Latest Update from the Field

From ‘Oprah’ to Building a Sisterhood in Congo

By Journalist and Author Nicholas Kristof - , February 10, 2010 06:16 PM

Five years ago, Lisa Shannon watched “Oprah” and learned about the savage, forgotten war here in eastern Congo, played out in massacres and mass rape. That show transformed Lisa’s life, costing her a good business, a beloved fiancé, and a comfortable home in Portland, Ore. — but giving her a chance to save lives in Congo.

I found myself stepping with Lisa into a shack here. It was night, there was no electricity, and a tropical rainstorm was turning the shantytown into a field of mud and streams. Lisa had come to visit a woman she calls her sister, Generose Namburho, a 40-year-old nurse.

Generose’s story is numbingly familiar: extremist Hutu militiamen invaded her home one night, killed her husband and prepared to rape her. Then, because she shouted in an attempt to warn her neighbors, they hacked off her leg above the knee with a machete.

As Generose lay bleeding near her husband’s corpse, the soldiers cut up the amputated leg, cooked the pieces on the kitchen fire, and ordered her children to eat their mother’s flesh. One son, a 12-year-old, refused. “If you kill me, kill me,” he told the soldiers, as his mother remembers it. “But I will not eat a part of my mother.”

So they shot him dead. The murder is one of Generose’s last memories before she blacked out, waking up days later in the hospital where she had worked.

That’s where Lisa enters the story. After seeing the Oprah show on the Congo war, Lisa began to read more about it, learning that it is the most lethal conflict since World War II. More than five million had already died as of the last peer-reviewed mortality estimate in 2007.

Everybody told her that the atrocities continued because nobody cared. Lisa, who is now 34, was appalled and decided to show that she cared. She asked friends to sponsor her for a solo 30-mile fund-raising run for Congolese women.

That led her to establish Run for Congo Women, which has held fund-raising runs in 10 American states and three foreign countries. The money goes to support sponsorships of Congolese women through a group called Women for Women International.

But in her passion, Lisa neglected the stock photo business that she and her fiancé ran together. Finally, he signaled to her that she had to choose — and she chose Congo.

One of the Congolese women (“sisters”) whom Lisa sponsored with her fund-raising was Generose. Lisa’s letters and monthly checks of $27 began arriving just in time.

“God sent me Lisa to release me,” Generose told me fervently, as the rain pounded the roof, and she then compared Lisa to an angel and to Jesus Christ.

Scrunching up in embarrassment in the darkened room, Lisa fended off deification. She noted that many impoverished Congolese families have taken in orphans. “They’ve lost everything,” she said, “but they take children in when they can’t even feed their own properly. I’ve been so inspired by them. I’ve tried to restructure my life to emulate them.”

It’s true. While for years world leaders have mostly looked the other way, while our friend Rwanda has helped perpetuate this war, while Congo’s president has refused to arrest a general wanted by the International Criminal Court, while global companies have accepted tin, coltan and other minerals produced by warlords — amid all this irresponsibility, many ordinary Congolese have stepped forward to share the nothing they have with their neighbors.

So Lisa is right that Generose and so many others here are awe-inspiring. Lisa tells her story in a moving book, “A Thousand Sisters,” that is set to be published in April. Congo is now her obsession, and she is volunteering full time on the cause as she lives off the declining royalties from her old stock photos.

She earns psychic pay when she sees a woman here who named her daughter Lisa. After we visited Congolese Lisa, I asked American Lisa about the toll of her Congo obsession — the lost business, man and home they had shared.

“Technically, I had a good life before, but I wasn’t very happy,” she mused. “Now I feel I have much more of a sense of meaning.”

Maybe that’s why I gravitate toward Lisa’s story. In a land where so many “responsible” leaders eschew responsibility, Lisa has gone out of her way to assume responsibility and try to make a difference. Along with an unbelievable cast of plucky Congolese survivors such as Generose, she evokes hope.

On this visit to Congo, Lisa is organizing a Run for Congo Women right here in Bukavu, for Feb. 28, with Congolese rape survivors participating. You can sponsor them at www.runforCongowomen.org. And one of those participating in the run, hobbling along on crutches and her one leg, will be Generose.

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