Thanks to Witherspoon St. Presbyterian and the Presbytery of the Coastlands, FEBA is delighted to have a grant to enable 100 of its 1200 members to qualify for and receive microloans.
The women were selected after careful attention to basic qualifications, including literacy, intelligent self-discipline and the determination to stick to a difficult budget. Next they participated in workshops on financial literacy and various kinds of food production: popular “fast foods” like donuts, plantain chips, etc. Then each will be given an appropriate small loan. Mentors will guide and encourage the women, meeting with them to help resolve challenges before they become issues. Thank you, Witherspoon, thank you, Coastlands!
Celebrating Generosity and New Knees!
LOOK WHO CAN WALK AGAIN!!! Our dear Maman Monique, founder and director of FEBA in Kinshasa, has two new knees!
After years of suffering pain and ever-increasing mobility issues from bone-on-bone knees, she has been gifted with this double knee replacement surgery and home physical therapy, thanks to the wonderful nonprofit called Operation Walk Carolinas.
Thank you so much, Dr. Bryan Springer and the Op Walk Team: Amy, Andrea, Chelsea, Chris, Erica, Erin, Kristen, Laura, Maggie, Matt, Sarah, Victoria! Many thanks also to our gracious hosts Anne and Fletcher, & the MPPC “ravens” who fed the guests.
A Successful Friendly Audit & Our First Annual Report!
Finally, after 11 years, we are getting to be a “grown-up” organization! Here are two measures of our maturity.
Thanks to Ms. Gabriella Clark Milley, we have had a successful friendly audit. Many thanks, Gabriella!
We also have produced our first annual report, with the artistic skills of Susan Lidstone. It is a wonderful overview of our partners’ projects, the successes that YOU have helped us create. To read the report, see the home page of our website: www.WomanCradleofAbundance.org
SPRING GALA!
April 27, 2024
PLEASE JOIN US for our 2nd annual spring gala. Special guests are Maman Monique, and Ms. Michelle Tuck-Ponder of Princeton. Our theme is “Women of Color Succeeding!” Fine dining, music, African Market, silent and live auctions, and lots of fun with great company! For tickets see our website: www.WomanCradleofAbundance.org
CCS Kids’ “Thank You!”
Community Charity School (CCS) exists in frightful and frightening circumstances in war-torn Goma, but they are truly amazing. Here they say “thank you” in many languages for their two school laptops, which provide their “computer classes.”
They are also very grateful for the new photocopier bought with YOUR Giving Tuesday donations, which will enable the teachers to make some printed lessons to add to the black-paint-on-wood “chalkboards.”
War, Climate Change, Cholera
For nearly three decades eastern Congo has been a warzone, first with the spill over of the Rwandan Genocide, then with various militia groups, including the infamous M23. Recent months have raised the specter of all-out war. Rwanda is widely considered to be arming and supporting the militias, and explosives (bombs) have fallen in parts of Goma as well as the surrounding region. There are estimated to be 7 million displaced persons in Congo, most in the east though also 150,000 west of Kinshasa, and the death toll is terrible and will become worse as food is ever harder to come by.
Climate change is contributing significantly to the suffering. Congo is experiencing the worst flooding in 60 years, and people who may still have roofs over their heads have been living with water underfoot for months, having seen all their possessions destroyed by being underwater. Others, of course, have lost the roofs also. Cholera has been raging in some parts of the Kivu.
Yet our partners keep on keeping on! See the CCS children saying “thank you.” Yet they share with each other, Kinshasa with Goma! As we, thanks to your generosity, share with them: food for war victims and those starving in the floods, medicine for those sick with cholera, hoping for new roofs someday.
FEBA’s Cosmetology Grant!
Thanks to Nassau Presbyterian, FEBA is celebrating adding another vocational track to its educational programs for destitute young women in Kinshasa.
Soon they will also be able to study cosmetology. In good Congo-style, this includes all kinds of hair dressing, coloring, arrangement; nails; skin care and make-up for all occasions (men and women); decorative arts, and more.
Here an aspiring teacher-learner is arranging Maman Monique’s hair for her trip to the USA: you have to be beautiful for surgery! Thank you, Nassau!
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