Empower Street Children's Education-Build A School

Just a quick email to let you know that Congo Children Trust will be again joining with GlobalGiving for their #GivingTuesday event on 3rd December.

This year we are focusing on the Kimbilio school building project and are asking all our supporters to donate via the link below on the 3rd December:

https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/empower-street-childrens-education-build-a-school/

We've come a long way since July this year when the grounds at Maison Kimbilio started to be cleared for the work. The foundations have been laid and a whole room has been built. It's so exciting to see it take shape. This school will be a beacon school in the area, offering education to all regardless of their background, with former street children attending school alongside their friends from the local community.

This year, GlobalGiving are offering a proportional match on all donations up to $1000. There is $500,000 which will be distributed to all charities involved proportionally based on final fundraising totals. This means that, at the end of #GivingTuesday, the projects that bring in the most funds will win the largest portion of the Incentive Fund. So the more we raise in donations, the more of the incentive fund that Kimbilio is eligible for.

It doesn't matter how big or small a donation every donation will help build this school!

Thank you so much for all you have already done to help the children at Kimbilio.

The school foundations have been laid! David, our Kimbilio builder, and his team have done such amazing work in such a short time. We can now see the outline of the school structure. Amazing and exciting!! The team will now start to work on raising the walls and we'll update you as soon as we can.

So where do we go from here? Kimbilio still needs your support to now begin to build the classrooms and office. We're well into the swing of the new school year now and looking forward to taking part in again in GlobalGiving's #GivingTuesday event on the 3rd December and the Year End Campaign over the holiday season. We'll be focusing our fundraising for this period on the school building but we'll let you know more about it nearer the time.

Kimbilio celebrated its 10th Anniversary this July 2019. We had a weekend of celebrations with the children, including a very special ceremony where the Anglican Bishop of Katanga Province, Bishop Bertin, laid the foundation stone for our new Ecole Primaire Kimbilio.

It was lovely to see all the children gather around the foundation stone as the local area is so deprived of affordable services. There was a real buzz in the community about this inpending development, with the area Chief and dignataries also attending the celebrations. The staff and carers at Kimbilio have worked hard to build this trust and partnerships over the last decade. We hope that this continues and local families are encouraged to send their children to school along side former street children.   

The steel in bought, the bricks are dried out and the area has been cleared by our resident builder, Papa David and his team. We're really looking forward to bring you more photos and news of how the building is going very soon. 

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. Unfortunately, some children have spent part of their lives exploited in the artisanal mines. 

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. 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, as 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 also looking forward. 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.