Provide a Loving Home for Street Girls in DR Congo

In the latter months of 2016, this GlobalGiving project was started to help raise funds to provide a loving home for street connected girls. Kimbilio had short term accommodation for girls but was finding that some families needed a little more time before the child was able to be reunited. We needed some long term accommodation where the children could continue to grow and thrive, but also give the families the time they needed to welcome them back. This GlobalGiving project was initally set up to raise money to build Maison Janet Bokwa, a place of safety and love for these young girls. 

This July 2019, a small team of UK volunteers visited Lubumbashi for Kimbilio's 10th Anniversary Celebrations. They had a fortnight packed with visiting all aspects of the project. In this time we were able to make several visits to Maison Janet Bokwa. The live in carers there are Selemani, Colette and their children. Its a fun and happy place, where the children are warm, fed and loved. The girls go to school and during our visit it was the last day of term with end of year reports. They all received good results and will be moving up to the next class in the new school year.   

So you did it, you provided a loving home for these former street girls. You gave the wonderful staff at Kimbilio the resources and tools to do all of this. Thank you. 

Over the next few months, as the final touches are put on the home (like a solar powered water pump), Kimbilio will look to close this particular GlobalGiving project. We will be opening a new one which focuses on all of our work with street connected girls, from first access right through to reuniting them with their families or providing a place of safety for them in the meantime. We hope that you will chose to continue to support us in this much needed work. To run Maison Janet Bokwa for 1 month alone costs £1230 and the reintegration process for one girl can cost £234. The work continues. So as we celebrate 10 years of Kimbilio giving street children a place of safety to run to, help us look forward with hope and determination that we will be able to continue to support street girls into the next decade and beyond.

April 12^th every year marks the International Day of the Street Child… and the anniversary of the official opening of Centre Kimbilio. In 2009, after years of planning and preparation, Kimbilio opened its doors and began the important work of creating a place of safety for street children.

Children find themselves abandoned to the streets for many reasons – the consequence of parental death often due to HIV or malaria, their family may be too poor to feed them, they may have lost their parents while fleeing fighting or they may be stigmatised as child witches.

On the streets they are prey to violence, exploitation and addiction. The rate of HIV is high and if a child is not already a carrier of the virus the risk of soon becoming one is also high. They are isolated and stigmatised.

Kimbilio offers these vulnerable children food, education, healthcare, shelter & emotional support. They also provide a place for the children to be themselves again, whether that be kicking a ball around, playing a game or being creative through art. And whenever its safe to do so, the Kimbilio staff will make every effort to reunite children to their families.

This year, we began the celebrations at Centre Kimbilio with the children and staff. And it doesn’t stop there. We are planning to have a thanksgiving celebration in July for the work of Kimbilio which will include the laying of the foundation stone of Kimbilio’s new primary school. Then in September, Congo Children Trust will be celebrating the year with a garden party in Manchester, UK, which we hope many of our supporters will attend. Watch this space!

Did you know that 2019 is a huge year for us?

#Kimbilio Is 10!

Congo Children Trust opened the doors for the first time 10 years ago to the outreach centre, Centre Kimbilio. We are so
proud of our journey and the trust that has been built along the way with the local community in Lubumbashi and the
surrounding province. Along the way, well as Centre Kimbilio, we opened 2 short-term homes and 2 long-term children's homes for street-connected children and those children formerly exploited for child labour.

We've put together some photo collages of our favourite moments and memories that we've included in this email. When did
you join the journey? Do you remember any of the photos? Any of the children or staff? What's your favourite memory?
Congo Children Trust would love to hear your #KimbilioMemory big or
small. Tweet us here, Facebook here or Instagram here using the hashtag #KimbilioIs10 and we'll retweet our favourites
over the coming months.

We're looking forward too. 2019 will see the first stage of our brand new primary school completed. Thanks to some
awesome support during GlobalGiving's Giving Tuesday and the Year End Campaign, Congo Children's Trust will be able to
build the first classroom. This school will be a place where our former street children, so often stigmatized, will
attend school alongside their peers from the local community. Imagine that - the possibilities are endless for all these
children.

Whether you have been supporting Kimbilio for 10 minutes or 10 years - Thank you! You are doing wonderful things.

Thank you for all your support throughout this year. We wanted to take this opportunity to let you hear directly from Jean Bosco Tshiswaka who is the Director of Kimbilio. He writes:

 “Dear Friends of Kimbilio,

 I am writing to thank you so much for your support to our work at Kimbilio in 2018.

I had really hoped to meet some of you this year in England, but unfortunately the High Commission again refused to give me the visa. That does not prevent me from expressing my deep gratitude to you for all that you have done to support me and Kimbilio's work.

Your support has allowed us to help many children and to assist many families of these vulnerable children including:

• An average of 43 children among them 38 boys and 5 girls per day at the Day Centre (Centre Kimbilio)
• 31 children currently living in our four houses, including 15 girls and 16 boys
• 33 children have so far been reunited with their families this year, among them 10 girls and 23 boys
• 23 children being supported through financing their school fees

Also, thanks to your support we have managed to start a program of enabling and equipping vulnerable young mums through a teaching hair salon; as well as continuing to support the mothers of some children reintegrated to their families by training them in our sewing program.  

We have worked hard this year and 2018 has been a good year for us at Kimbilio, but we still have some challenges to improve our work for these children, especially during family reintegrations. Some children’s families refuse to take them back and will accuse them of witchcraft. Some families are so poor that the children refuse to stay in the families and prefers to go back in the street where they can find small things to eat. So it is sometimes difficult for us to meet all these cases and to welcome more than our capacity. At this time we have more children on the streets of Lubumbashi, many coming from Kasai region where they had faced violence, hunger and disease. 

Once again thanks for your goodwill to help us to help this vulnerable group and we hope that you will continue with such generosity.  

Yours Sincerely,

Jean  Bosco TSHISWAKA
Director  of  Kimbilio” 

We are so thankful for Jean Bosco and his wonderful team at Kimbilio. They work tirelessly for the wellbeing of those children connected to the streets in Lubumbashi. Next year, we hope to continue to grow in meeting the needs of street-connected children. Our hope is to complete the first stage of our primary school in the grounds of Maison Kimbilio. We aim to make it a flagship school, well known for the care and attention in helping each child achieve their potential where stigmatized street-connected children will be educated alongside local children. For more info about this please visit our GlobalGiving page here. 

So for this #GivingTuesday and #YearEndCampaign with GlobalGiving, we are asking our supporters to commit to sharing our stories of Kimbilio with a friend or a colleague that is interested in supporting a small grassroots charity. Your continued support and enthusiasm are so important to us.

For these campaigns we will be focusing on our school project so if you are able to give at this time of year, please consider Congo Children Trust especially on #GivingTuesday which is the 27^th November. On this day all donations will be matched with an Incentive Fund. The Incentive Fund will be distributed to participants proportionally based on final fundraising totals.  

And if you regularly give one off to Congo Children Trust, why not explore recurring giving each month? During the Year End Campaign, new recurring donations up to $200 per donor per project started during the campaign will get an additional 100% match from GlobalGiving on the initial donation as long as it remains active for at least four consecutive payments.

Full terms and conditions for all of these ways to give can be found on the GlobalGiving website. Giving Tuesday begins on 27^th November and the Year End Campaign continues from 28^th November to the 31^st December 2018. 

Thank you again for your continued support and may we take this opportunity to be one of the first to wish you Happy Holidays and a Peaceful New Year.    

This month, our young girls in the care of Kimbilio went back to school to continue their studies. Throughout the summer holidays they have continued to read and study as well as enjoy lots of playtime. Now was the time to return to their classes. We are incredible proud of how hard working each child is and their enthusiasm for learning is wonderful. 

Education in D.R. Congo is held in high regard. It is seen as a way out of poverty and a way to change lives. Unfortunately, many families cannot afford the state funded education which still requires school fees to be paid, as well as exam fees. Many parents of street children often say that the additional cost of education is one of the reasons that their child has ended up on the streets.

Kimbilio helps children living on the streets of Lubumbashi work towards achieving their dreams of becoming a teacher, a pilot, a hairdresser or a doctor in many ways. 

We have a robust and safe reintegration procedure. When a child is welcomed back to their family, Kimbilio can offer to help with school fees. We have seen the benefits of this, as last year two children that had been reunited with their families returned to ask for help with college fees.

We have apprenticeship programs and projects for those young people who are less suited traditional education. Most recently we have set up a Young Mums' Hair Salon where young women can learn how to provide for their small families. All of the young mums on the first cohort of training had been street children.

If we are waiting and trying to find a child's family, they will often stay at Kimbilo's Girls' Transit House, where tutors come to visit and teach them the basics of how to read, mathematics and art.

And when a child cannot be reunited with their parents, Kimbilio supports and nurtures them at Maison Janet Bokwa and they are able to attend a local school. 

As you can see, providing a loving home for street girls goes way beyond a roof over their heads. It means nurturing them and providing the opportunities which will allow them to flourish. That's what your donation does - Thank You

Next year is Kimbilio's Tenth Anniversary and our plan is to complete the first stage of construction of our own school, supported by the local Anglican Diocese. This school will see children from all backgrounds learning together which we hope will help to some of the prejudices that street-connected children face. You can find out more about the project on our GlobalGiving page here. 

Thank you again. We wish you a happy Autumn!