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PAID
PAID: Le Programme d Assistance d Integration des Defavorises (Program of Aid and Integration to the Under-privileged) Quartier Mikonga/Bibwa, Commune N sele
PAID is a Congolese nonprofit organization formally created in October 2002 located outside of Kinshasa, the capital city of DRC, in the quartier of Mikonga/Bibwa. A long-neglected, poverty-stricken area, with little infrastructure, this was designated by the UNHCR and the RDC government as a place for refugees and displaced persons from the war.
Mission: To assist underprivileged people who have been rejected by society - especially street children and orphans (but also individuals infected with HIV/AIDs and the elderly) to become capable of supporting themselves, Love-Solidarity-Equity is the motto chosen by PAID. The scope of their vision encompasses health, education, and development.
History: PAID is the vision of a well-known and beloved pastor in the Ubangi region of the Equateur province in northwest DRC, Pastor Babese. The project began in the Ubangi when its founder began offering two meals a day to orphans and street children, many of whom were victims of war and the disease and destroyed health care that follow war. The main offices were located in Gemena, the provincial capital of Equateur Province until continued impacts of the war made it necessary for PAID to move its headquarters and focus of activities to Kinshasa. PAID hopes to re-establish an office and implement a project in the Ubangi sometime in the future.
Current Activities: Since Oct. 2002, PAID has taken under its charge the care and support of 50 street children and / or orphans many of whom are refugees from the wars in Congo Brazzaville and in DRC. Others are AIDS orphans, still others have left their homes due to violence or extreme poverty, and some have run away from the refugee camps at Mpasa. The staff at PAID are committed to finding relatives of these children or other guardians in hopes of placing them in a family environment.
Because the long-term vision of PAID is to help the children they serve become self-sufficient, the directors of PAID decided to provide the younger children with a primary school education and children over the age of 15 with professional training. In 2003, PAID received funding from the Italian government to begin to implement its vision which includes creating:
• A complexe scolaire called Centre Salisa (the Salisa Center) with the classroom capacity to educate as many as 350 students. The complex was designed to have 6 classrooms and 6 sanitary facilities (3 for girls / 3 for boys). The school is not only open to the orphans and street children being cared for at the site, but also to the children of poor families in the neighborhood. According to PAID documents, the organization covers tuition expenses.
• A professional training program for children over the age of 15 in areas such as masonry, brick-laying, joinery, and sewing. These professions are always in high demand. Two workshops have been built with some equipment but a ferocious storm in May tore off the tin roofing rendering one building unusable at this time.
• Administrative offices for the administrative staff and the director of the school
• A health center
• The means to purchase transportation for the staff and children
• The means to purchase property to build a dormitory for the street children and orphans living on site
Funding from the Italian government has now ended due to the Euro and PAID is now without any stable funding source. In order to support their activities, PAID bought 125 hectares to farm in the locality of Kindobo located in the commune of N'sele. Without a tractor, PAID cultivated 5 hectares of soy and harvested 15 tons in 2004-2005. They used the soy to feed the street children and orphans and the rest they sold to raise money for the organization. However, teachers and staff have not been paid for months and the Centre Salisa remains half-built.
GBA and PAID: As a board, we believe that investing in infrastructure in the short term will help us realize our goals of service-centered education in the long-term. GBA hopes to partner with PAID in a number of ways including:
• Teacher and staff support (financial and teacher training support)
• Helping to feed, clothe, and house the orphans and street children at Centre Salisa, and
• Working with PAID leadership to develop community service projects on site for Congolese students from CFFL (see link) and UPC (see link) who benefit from GBA educational support to give back.
References: The principal sources of information are: reports, proposals, and an information pamphlet created by PAID, and discussions with Jackson Babese, President and PAID staff (teachers and administrative staff). We also add our own observations from our visit to the Salisa Center April 30, 2005.
CFFL
Centre de Formation de Future Leaders (CFFL) (Training Center for Future Leaders) Karawa, Ubangi, Equateur Province, DRC
CFFL is a newly created project (opened Nov 14, 2005) founded by Dr. Mossai Sanguma, the President of the CEUM (Communite Evangelique Ubangi Mongala), a church in northwestern DRC. Once the dormitory and classrooms of white missionary children, the buildings of CFFL are now partially rehabilitated and occupied by Congolese students who the founders of the school hope will become future leaders of the CEUM and why not the DRC in general? concludes an organizing document written by CFFL director, Joel Zambite.
Mission: The vision for CFFL is long-term. Its immediate goal is to strengthen the ability of a select number of CEUM secondary school students to successfully pass their national exam through intensive preparation and training. An intermediate goal is to provide opportunities for students who do pass their national exams to attend institutions of higher learning with the intention that they will return to the CEUM as future leaders in areas such as health care, education, development, gender education, agriculture, and pastoral work. The current leadership of the CFFL has the long-term goal of creating a university for students in the Equateur province who currently have to go 900 air miles south to Kinshasa if they wish to attend a university.
History: The original vision for this school derives from questions posed by Dr. Sanguma. Why are so many of the students of the CEUM secondary schools not passing their national exams? What is wrong with the education system in the DRC? Is it lack of money? Qualified teachers? Qualified students? Does the explanation lie entirely in the destructive effects of the recent war? What are the current obstacles that prevent so many students from succeeding? To answer these questions, Dr. Sanguma and members of the CEUM Department of Education, decided to conduct a pilot project at Karawa that would isolate the best and brightest students and teachers from the five failing secondary schools in the area and allow them to develop a focused and intensive year of education and training. Their hope is that this training will improve the success rate of students on the national exam. These best and brightest students and teachers were identified by a passing score on exams created specifically for this experiment. The CFFL faculty continue to teach in their former secondary schools in addition to teaching CFFL students but their state salaries are supplemented by CFFL.
Current Activities: CFFL opened its classrooms for the first time in November 2005. An experiment in alternative education, CFFL breaks from the Belgian system of learning by providing intensive, personal, hands-on attention to each student. Class sizes are very small (the largest having 10 students). The logic of the school rests on competition that is assumed to foster high achievement. Only those who passed the qualifying entrance exam were allowed to enter CFFL. There is a trickle down assumption that, over time, teachers at CFFL will also improve the overall quality of education in the regular schools where they teach, and the CFFL graduates that return to their communities will strengthen them with the breadth and depth of their experiences. The first class of 2005 includes 35 students and 18 faculty and staff. Of the 35 students, 6 are female and 29 male. This gender inequality mirrors the reality of education in the DRC where young girls are often unable to attend primary school because of school fees and cultural demands placed on women.
The future leaders that benefit from CFFL training for higher education are fully expected to return to rural Equateur Province once they have completed their university degrees. It is interesting to note that the church itself had little to do with the formation of CFFL. The principal decision makers are the principal donors of the initiative coordinated through Dr. Sanguma and the administrative team that includes the Coordinator of all CEUM schools, the director of CFFL, and other Congolese advisors such as a chaplain administrative assistant.
GBA and CFFL: Like PAID, CFFL represents an opportunity for GBA to become immediately involved in a partnership between a Congolese-driven vision for serving the needs of young people in an under-served and poor region of the DRC. As is the case with PAID, we believe that investing in infrastructure in the short term will help us realize our goals of service-centered education in the long-term. GBA hopes to partner with CFFL in a number of ways including:
• Teacher support (financial and teacher development)
• Working with CFFL faculty and administrators to develop a "giving back" program within the curriculum that would link CFFL students with students in failing secondary schools devastated by the civil wars of the last decade.
• Exploring ways to link Congolese students from CFFL (see link) with UPC (see link) through the GBA Scholars program. We also envision some CFFL students accepted into the GBA Scholars program to complete part of their "giving back" requirements by working at PAID while they complete their university studies.
References: The principal source for this description derives from program documents provided us by Pastor Joel Zambite, Director of CFFL and face-to-face conversations with Dr. Sanguma (President of CEUM and Founder of CFFL); Coordinateur Mayangana (Coordinator of all CEUM schools); Pastor Zabite (Director CFFL), faculty and staff of CFFL and observations from our visit to CFFL on May 9, 2006
Protestant University of Congo (UPC)
The Protestant University of Congo (UPC) is arguably the premier university currently functioning in the DRC. From a student body of roughly 200 theology students at its inception in 1959, the university has grown to its current enrollment in 2005 of 5,379 students half of whom are female.
Mission: UPC seeks to equip Congo's future leaders with a high quality university education that is well grounded in a sound appreciation and understanding of ethics.
History: Launched as a theology school by a coalition of five Protestant missionary groups, UPC has survived several crises, not least of which was the political upheaval and violence of Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960 and the subsequent political instability that has followed Congo ever since. When the Congolese government nationalized all universities in 1971, UPC moved its campus from Kisangani to Kinshasa. Since then, it has expanded its scope to include two new colleges: the School of Law and the School of Business and Economics. In October 2006, it will open its doors to a new medical school.
Current Activities: Today, the Protestant University of Congo stands as a "foundational element in Congo's new society" (July 2006, newsletter). With an enrollment of over 5000 students in 2005, UPC has grown exponentially from its original enrollment of 200 theology students. Of the three colleges, the School of Theology is the oldest and currently enrolls about 300 students, thus assuring the high level of leadership in the Congolese church. The Schools of Law and Business and Economics, both developed in the last decade, account for the remaining students and signify UPC's commitment to create ethical leaders who will strengthen the political and economic life of the country. This commitment will be extended to the field of health, when UPC opens its first medical school in October 2006. 90% of UPC's financial support is student tuition supplemented by support from US and European organizations.
UPC's governing board is made up of Congolese representatives from its five founding churches and from the 62 member ecumenical organization that serves as an umbrella for some 8,000,000 Protestants in the Congo. Several at-large individuals selected by the Board of Trustees also sit on this board. Led by the Rev. Dr. B. NGOY, (PhD University of Strasbourg, France), UPC has maintained a high level of excellence in teaching and scholarship throughout the years. Its well-qualified Congolese faculty members hold degrees from a number of overseas universities in Europe and North America and maintain a commitment to the ethical standards upheld by the university in their teaching and research.
The student body at UPC represents a diverse and vibrant group of students from all over Congo. UPC deliberately seeks to maintain gender equality in its admission standards and provides a number of opportunities for women such as the up-coming sustainable business plan competition for Congolese women students in the Entrepreneurship program at UPC's School of Business and Economics. Newly elected student body president Prince Mukabe summarizes well the energy and vision that guides this group of future Congolese leaders." The greatest danger that victimizes our country in the upcoming decades," he said, "is not the risk of foreign aggression, but rather a crisis of human potential. Our country needs youths who bring their reflections, their proposals, as well as their determination to give a new and powerful push for Congo's development…We must awaken a sense of responsibility with regard to the future of our beautiful and large country…African wisdom teaches us that a single finger cannot do the work of a whole hand. We…must all come together to build, to edify, to raise, stone after stone, thought after thought, action followed by action, to spread the reputation of our alma mater. (Prince Mukabe, at his acceptance speech as the newly elected student body president)
UPC and GBA: At its annual meeting in December 2005, GBA board members decided to support the development of a partnership with UPC in the creation of a GBA Scholars program. In addition to extra-curricular activities designed to help students apply their class-room learning in the "real world," GBA Scholars will also be asked, upon completion of their course work, to commit 2 years of their time to serve in an impoverished or under-served rural (or urban) community in the DRC. The guiding principles of this program are summarized below.
(Information retrieved from UPC newsletters, conversations with UPC administrators and supporters, and from the UPC public relations office website: www.upcpublicrelations.org)
Questions about this website? Please contact Melanie Schlosser
Pole pole ndio mwendo: slowly slowly wins the race (Swahili)