Despite many challenges, YOU have made 2022 the best year yet for Woman, Cradle of Abundance! We are so very grateful to each one of you.
CONGO:
Education & Graduates:
11 young women from FEBA’s sewing school;
12 youth from secondary school (A.A. level);
22 sixth-graders from Community Charity School, in the face of war conditions in Goma;
Solar panels & electricity for CCS.
Health:
Promesse’s life-saving surgery thanks to GoFundMe;
Hundreds of food-insecure families fed;
Medical assistance for victims of violence & disease.
Construction:
A new roof for the Women’s Center: thanks, Nassau!
Renovations and two new classrooms in the Center.
Farms:
The FEBA tractor busy at the farm and earning income by rental;
Rented tractor advancing Uvira women’s farm to the next level of productivity.
USA:
A fine professional development retreat: thank you, Diane Mataraza and wonderful consultants!
An amazing new website, thanks to newest board member, Dr. Karen Brown!
A modified book celebration for Maman Monique’s autobiography: Owing to visa problems we missed Maman Monique, but enjoyed board members’ events celebrating her book, and hundreds of copies distributed to friends, churches, and supporters.
Upgrading financial processes: we are transferring records to QuickBooks; thanks to Jean Desravines and Christine Shungu for help.
YOU & Wonderful Partners: Our total income has surpassed any previous year! $159,893 in cash, plus $8,346 in-kind donations from board members for office/ operating expenses. Total cash to Congo partners $141,685 (with more to come in Jan. 23).
Community Charity School: Modeling Courage & Success
This has been a very difficult year for CCS in Goma. The decades-long guerrilla conflict escalated, intensifying danger, causing significant shortages of food and medicine, disrupting life.
Yet teachers and students at CCS are going about their business, as these carefully tidy boys and the kids at recess show.
Courage & Success!!!
Have you ever imagined what it is like to try to feed and cloth, house and educate a family of 6 on $11.40 per day? The majority of Congolese women constantly struggle to meet that challenge by working at subsistence farming in rural areas or little informal urban businesses.
FEBA helps its members by providing micro-savings and microloan opportunities. A bank account is out of reach but each one can bring her little savings: $1 or perhaps $3 or perhaps only 50 cents/month, to build a tiny nest egg for a business or emergency. In these difficult times, more women are joining FEBA: 20 last month, 15 this month. FEBA has needed to print new savings books & member cards. The women take such pride in having their own little blue savings books to register their hard-earned nickels & dimes.
The covid shut-down devastated these businesses, so in late 2020 FEBA provided 60 women with very small loans of $100 each. Success means constant self-denial, but what incredible things these women have done! In spite of astronomical inflation. In spite of torrential floods brought on by climate change. In spite of it all... they remain feisty and determined.
So now FEBA has started a second round of loans for the women who have managed to repay the first ones, and continues to mentor all the women. Given the handicap of inflation, these grants will be larger: mostly $150, with a few women whose projects make that appropriate receiving more. (Repayment is sometimes impossible; it may be a choice between that and starvation, so FEBA may forgive the loan though these women cannot qualify for a second.)
Struggles with Climate Change
Climate change is a daily obstacle for survival in Congo. Traditional rainy and dry seasons have been severely disrupted in recent years. Rains which were expected at the beginning of September came late in Kinshasa. In the Kivu there was a burst of flooding but then no rain for many weeks.
Shortly before Christmas, when rains should be ending, Kinshasa province was inundated; 150 people lost their lives, roads were washed out, homes destroyed, entire households reduced to wading through waters looking for any bit of food or clothing they could rescue. Food prices tripled because the delivery routes were impassable. Government aid came to bury the dead, rebuild roads, but ordinary people were left to find what help their friends or neighbors might provide.
FEBA is deeply grateful that none of its members died, but it has had a major task to house and feed its devastated members, and provide medical care for many children ill from being unable to get dry or warm. Thank you for your year-end gifts which helped prevent starvation and restored health to the sick.
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