The French School of Kinshasa donated books, toys, clothing and board games that their students had brought to be given to underprivileged children. We feel honored to have been chosen as their recipient of such good quality gifts. While most of the books will enter our little library, and clothing will be distributed to the neediest children, we will keep the best items as prizes for the 5 best students of each class at the year end graduation. Thank you so much, French School of Kinshasa, we are very grateful!

Donation of books from the French School of Kinshasa

A big thank you also to Marsavco who continues to quarterly donate a large quantity of high-quality food, household and sanitary products. Your gifts have a big impact in keeping a good health and cleanliness standard in the school and medical center.

A few new babies were born in Kikimi. A mandatory inoculation day was organized by Florence to prevent polio and tuberculosis. It’s always a happy occasion when mothers meet at our center to receive check-ups for themselves and their babies, and they often sing together.

Newborn baby

Newborn baby

Postnatal care

This is how babies are weighed in Congo

Women singing while waiting for postnatal care

Waiting for postnatal careMandatory inoculation (polio and tuberculosis)

3       Construction

Our major project this year is to build housing for the staff and occasional volunteers. The first step is to clear the land and prepare the building site, which involves uprooting any vegetation that would stand in the way. The second step is to make bricks and give them time to dry. 

Clearing out the land

Removing roots

Making bricks

Our budget this year should enable us to get the whole housing built, but we were short to install solar panels in order to provide the needed electricity. “We Lift Up” set up a fund-raiser webpage for it right here. You are welcome to go there to add your contribution, which will enable us to install electricity in the staff housing as soon as it is built. Thank you so much in advance!

4       Gender Equality/Girls Education

We’ve been very proud to have as many girls as boys attending our schools, and even more proud when girls have been laureates to the State final primary school exams, as has happened for several years. As Brigham Young so adequately said, “You educate a man, you educate a man. You educate a woman, you educate a generation.”  Ever since the building of our first school, we have promoted gender equality and girls’ education. However, one big obstacle teenage girls are facing is that families don’t have the resources to purchase sanitary pads for their daughters. This is a huge hurdle and disadvantage to the female students who miss a significant amount of school because of it. They end up staying home 5 days out of each month, and some of them even missed the final primary school exam because of this handicap. Weliftup.org created an appeal page to raise funds to supply our 53 teenage girls with monthly protections for a year, and before we even had time to ask for your contributions, they have already raised the needed amount! Thank you so much, Weliftup, on behalf of these girls. It is going to change their lives and give them so much more hope for a better future! You can view their page here.

“Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.” 
― Jane Austen

“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.” 
― Nelson Mandela

“Teach the uneducated as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” 
― Victor Hugo

“With guns you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism.” 
― Malala Yousafzai

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

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