The challenge of providing education to tens of thousands of displaced and/or extremely poor children in North Kivu continues for Comfort Congo. With 171 schools being run (109 primary and 62 secondary) over an area of thousands of square miles, and with 47,582 pupils (25,416 boys and 22,166 girls), this is a huge operation but an absolutely vital lifeline for the children of North Kivu, DRC. Comfort International supports the schools programme in two ways:
School buildings
The first is through school and classroom building. Most of the schools have been hastily built with some wooden planks but often lack walls, benches, chairs or blackboards and have sharp volcanic rubble as floors. School building is often done in partnership with the Congolese Government or other large organisations because of the huge cost involved. This year we have been involved in four major school construction projects. We bought the land for La Miseracorde school for $25,000 (c. £21,000), and for Kambize school we paid $20,000 (c. £17,000) of the building costs. For Rubaya we are paying the complete amount for the school building, except the donation of land by the community, which is likely to be around £83,000 when complete, and for the Kyezye extension we are seeking to meet the requirement of $45,000 (c. £36,000) for the land and 10% of the building costs.
Those are obviously large amounts of money but Comfort Congo have made a clear case that in order to change a nation you need to change a generation. The schools give children a hope and a future and are taught with clear Christian principles and teaching. It’s been wonderful to see these schools being built and children trading broken benches set precariously on rubble for proper classrooms where they can focus on learning. Here’s where we are at with the main projects for this year:
Kambize Primary School
Following our appeal last year, Kambize Primary School is now completely built and paid for! Comfort Congo writes, “Kambize has opened officially in this school year. We are glad because pupils are learning comfortably. When we launched it, partners, parents and pupils expressed their gratitude to Comfort Congo for buying the land where Kambize is built. Also, there is a governmental program that feeds pupils in Kambize. We are happy to tell you that pupils are studying in good and acceptable conditions.” Thank you so much for all your donations which made this possible!
Kyezye Extension
The old Kyezye school has a special place in our hearts as this was the first school we partnership funded to build new classrooms. We will never forget the joy of seeing pupils, who had been using wooden sheds with rough sharp volcanic rock floors and at best rickety planks of wood for benches, now sitting on new benches with desks and smooth floors with proper walls, roofs and windows. Something we take for granted in our schools was such a joy to see. But recently with the pressures of increasing numbers of children displaced by the war the classrooms have been overflowing and children unable to access school. So when the Congo government offered to fund 90% of building costs for an extension on the condition that Comfort Congo/International bought the land and covered 10% of building costs, Comfort Congo stepped out in faith, agreed the deal and our dear colleague Dieudonné secured an immediate loan with his house as collateral to ensure the time envelope for funding to be in place was not missed. The land was sold by a local chief who agreed on the need for the school and is right in the midst of one of the large displaced people camps between the Comfort Congo hospital (CHR) and several of the other schools (Salugaba, Walugaba and St Jean). The work of Comfort Congo among the people in this displaced camp now includes education through their schools, healthcare through the hospital and feeding through the children’s malnutrition work and is deeply moving.
La Misericorde
We bought the land for La Misericorde school and there are six tempoarary classrooms now built there. The classes swap over in the afternoon so there are twelve classes that study there each day but many more children are in need of access to education. Comfort Congo is in discussions with the government in an effort to find solutions to this problem.
Rubaya
In 2022 we ran an appeal to raise funds to build a school in Rubaya, a village situated by a large mine where many of the community are conscripted to work and where mineral conflict is fierce and dangerous. The community donated the land for the school, and their thirst for their children to receive education was infectious. We were able to start building work, but in the latter part of 2023, the M23 army took control of much of the area around Rubaya, and effectively cut off Rubaya from the provincial capital Goma, where Comfort Congo are based.
Sponsored Teachers and Adopt a Class
The second way we support the education programme is through the support of teachers and classes. We run both teachers’ sponsorship and Adopt a Class, both at £30 a month. The two sponsorship programmes achieve similar goals but approach things from two perspectives, with the teachers sponsorship aiming to pay the teacher a salary to enable him/her to teach the class, whereas the Adopt a Class provides funding for the class to function which includes the teacher’s salary but may also help provide chalk and notebooks etc. Those are not big sponsorship programmes with small numbers being supported and we would love to support more teachers and classes.
Even with support, life is very difficult for the teachers, without it, life is a struggle to survive. Many teachers cannot afford to feed their children more than once a day. At some point we would like to have two sponsors for each of the teachers but the present need is to have one sponsor for each teacher from the schools where we support teacher salaries. In the midst of those struggles though, there is also joy and reward.
Theophile has been a science teacher at Kisima Secondary School for 7 years, since the school first opened. Theophile’s family are all teachers and so he wanted to be one as well. He studied biology at university before becoming a teacher but has returned to university whilst teaching to study French so that he can teach that as well. Because of the volume of Internally Displaced People from Matura and Masisi, Theophile has 135 children in his class – 75 of them are from the Displaced Community.
Theophile loves teaching; he loves having time to help the children develop their skills and learn. There are many challenges that he faces as a teacher though. The classrooms are too small, even before the influx of displaced children they were too small. Often, students are unable to sit in class and so cannot fully participate. He often does not have the materials to teach properly – lacking chalk, notebooks and pens. Theophile’s classroom does not yet have a floor – it is just bare rock. Often, because many children cannot afford shoes, they cut their feet on the floor and the school takes them to be treated for this, which further eats into the school’s limited budget.
Before Theophile was a part of the Sponsor a Teacher program, he felt a lot of shame in front of his class. This was because he could not afford shoes himself, or soap to wash his clothes. He felt embarrassed being in front of the class, he lost his confidence in front of them because he could not come to teach and look well kept. He was going through a difficult period before he was sponsored and had to stay with his brother. Now that he is a part of the Sponsor a Teacher program though, he has been able to afford his own home to rent and now his brother stays with him.
Theophile said that, before he was sponsored, he had no peace in his heart because everything was difficult. Sponsorship has restored this peace because, although life still has challenges, he is better able to face the material challenges. Theophile hopes and prays that more of his colleagues will be adopted into the sponsorship program as many of them currently face the same challenges that he used to. With sponsorship he knows that their lives can be better. He hopes for better conditions for the children at the school – enough space, enough materials and enough teachers.
The Comfort Congo education programme is a case of amazing achievements in the midst of ongoing massive challenges. The more teachers and Adopt a Class sponsors we have, the more teachers will have food for their children and classes will have blackboards and chalk. If you have friends or family who want to change the lives of around 80 children for £30 a month that is the way to do it! Thank you so much for your ongoing support. Please continue to share the amazing work that Comfort Congo is doing to providence education in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Thank you.