We held our annual supporters’ day on October 23rd at our office in Cumbernauld. It was fantastic to finally see so many of our supporters face to face. Comfort International Director, Callum Henderson, shared our story of the past 18 months and our hopes for the future. Below is a summary of the main points.
Look back over the past year
The kind of pressures that society has been under over the last 18 months have brought out the best and worst of humanity. At Comfort International we have been blown away by the amazing support of so many people for the work of Comfort. It has been a real eye-opener and a huge encouragement to have had so many people do so many amazing things. When people do a fundraiser because they know we have not been able to carry out our normal fundraising, or when people respond to an emergency appeal, or when we hear of people praying for the work, or when people drop us a word of encouragement, it is an inspiration to us and our supporters are such special people. We are so blessed and so thankful to our supporters, trustees, staff and volunteers that Comfort International has been able to thrive over the last 18 months thanks to you and our wonderful heavenly Father.
Last year our income would have been expected to drop drastically – the shop was closed for months on end, the income and expenditure on trips was curtailed, so our income from ‘activities for generating funds’ was down from 127k to 17k. Yet despite fundraisers and church visits being cancelled, our voluntary donations were up from 337k to 436k which meant that we were able to cover all our commitments and projects.
This past year we have invested much time and energy to clarifying and creating consistency in the identity and voice of the charity. We have done that because we want to embed who we are, what we do and how we speak and write in the foundation of our mission and vision because we deeply believe in what we are called to do. We remind ourselves that what we want to see is wholeness, purpose and unity restored in people and communities across the nations of the world through the powerful love and practical action of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom and therefore our mission is to help rebuild lives devastated by poverty, genocide and conflict in the nations of the world.
It is a deep deep privilege to be involved in this mission and we want to stay true to that through compassionate, faith-filled, courageous action to bring redemptive transformation to many of the poorest and most deeply traumatised people on earth.
The reality of human society unfortunately means that the horizon is awash with the injustice, brokenness and hopelessness of precious people so there is an urgency and necessity to keep working hard to enhance our ability to reach people in those situations.
Looking back it has been a huge blessing to be able to support those whose income dried up and who were struggling with hunger during Covid-19. There was also an amazing response to the Nyiragongo eruption which enabled us to send over £23,000 to provide emergency food, re-equip schools, rebuild homes, provide lifesaving medicines and restore belongings.
The ongoing projects in DRC of vegfam agriculture, schools, Children of Liberty (ex-child soldiers), Central Hospital of Rusayu, and rape survivor support are continuing to operate well and provide crucial support.
There have also been new developments in DRC including the extension of Comfort Babies to Congo, the construction of the Flo Centre for rape survivors at Kirotshe, the development of the Kyezye health clinic, and the purchase of the land and buildings for Carys school at Rutshuru.
Projects, however, are about people, and it has been good to see 25 Children of Liberty like Innocent, who was kidnapped as a 13 year old schoolboy and forced into a life of shocking brutality, but rescued, supported through school and now has his own wedding reception and photography business and a heart that loves praising God for His healing and grace. It is seeing people like Innocent restored, healed, saved, and equipped that fulfils our purpose.
In Rwanda the Street Kids Rescue projects have continued to flourish although the education of the children was disrupted badly. When the children finish school they go onto the School Leavers’ Development Programme where they receive sponsorship as a grant for business or further education. That was also disrupted but we are back on track to see increasing numbers of the children set up businesses, go to university and generally move on with a fulfilling life.
Comfort Babies continues to expand with 96 mums and babies. Covid also disrupted progress to independent living with the mums but we are hopeful of graduations soon.
With Good News International much of our focus has been on working with them to support survivors through the Covid crisis but there have also been some significant community developments. A 20 home village at Gishyita community is nearing completion, we participated in the building of a memorial and resting place for those who died in the genocide at Mubuga, and there has been progress with various farming projects and 30 kilo honey harvests at Karengera.
The Solace survivor sponsorship programme is one of our longest projects and we are really appreciative of some very long term support being given to vulnerable survivors.
One of the biggest challenges our partners Solace face is the growing old of genocide survivors who are already hampered by injury and the loss of male family members, so food support during Covid and the pension programme at Rukumberi are especially welcome with similar needs at Jari where house building and improvements have supported the community there. We are looking at coffee growing and import for Glesga Roasters (www.glesgaroasters.com) as an option for some Solace communities.
The pilot project with Africa hope Initiatives Solidarity Groups of vulnerable women saw a 6-fold increase in income and 100% payback of the loans so we have now entered an official partnership with AHI and expanded that project.
South Sudan is our most challenging country to work in – internet and email communications are poor, few people speak English and we have not learned Arabic, security is not great, travel is difficult, 92% of the population is living in multidimensional poverty, and so we have only visited the project and team once. The project faces big challenges of spiralling costs for food and education, homes have been destroyed by flooding and so we want to make sure we get every child sponsored so that the project is on a really secure footing and we can look at building the work there.
Similar challenges occur in Burundi with UN figures showing the second highest rate of nutritional poverty in the world at over 50% of the population. It’s a country that really needs help and the street kids rescue project is making a real difference, but not to enough people.
The Comfort International Ministry School (CIMS) is going excellently in Uganda where there is now a foundation and diploma level. CIMS is also progressing in Burundi, but is presently on hold in Rwanda.
View of the future
There is always a little bit of reticence to go down the route of goals and plans for the future as we are all too aware of the words of James ‘you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow, you ought to say ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’ so let us say if God wills this is the direction we believe it is right to move in.
We were delighted to have Peter McLean join the staff team as relationship manager but his arrival coincided with the onset of lockdown. Peter’s key role is to encourage and motivate support from non-engaged churches – part of our call is to inform and inspire the church of Jesus to take the bible’s teaching on helping the poor as a serious part of the Kingdom of God. Peter’s work, which is now able to include regular church visits helps the church to fulfil their call to help the poor and it helps us to fulfil ours and we’re delighted to see a significant amount of new churches begin to partner with us.
Our applications to trusts and foundations are resulting in much more success with the advent of Linda Macfarlane’s volunteering in that area and this is allowing us to access finance for some difficult to fund projects.
However, a major issue is that the expansion of projects has created a gap in sponsors of around £3,500 of sponsorship requirements per month. Over the next few months we will be seeking to fill in as many of those sponsorship gaps as possible which we estimate if we were to get all the sponsors we’d like for the present projects would be around another 140 sponsors, particularly for Congo teachers, CHR staff, Comfort Babies Congo, ITVET, SKR Burundi and South Sudan Child support.
We believe that one of the key developments we want to see among the projects is progress with monitoring and evaluation. It is an area that has historically been left to the side in much of what we do, largely because our approach has been to show people the partners, projects and people their support has helped by taking them to visit. But it’s increasingly clear that we need some kind of evidence based monitoring and evaluation.
Our biggest present project is the construction of the Comfort Transformation Centre which will take quite a few years to complete but we are expecting to start building using the funds we already have in the immediate future.
In DRC there are so many needs that still need tackled. High on the priority list are the street children of Goma and Rusayu. The testimonies of the child soldiers have often been from those who escaped and made their way to Goma and finished up on the streets. There are also many many other young people on the streets and it’s a dangerous and often criminal and violent life on the streets of Goma. In addition, the Nyiragongo volcanic eruption and the ensuing deaths through disease left many young people orphans or homeless and Comfort Congo are presently struggling to provide food for as many of them as they can around the area of the hospital. Extra classrooms are also urgently needed for Kisima school to cope with the influx of displaced children with up to 126 children in one classroom at present.
Further into the future our vision is to see the present hospital building split in two to create separate maternity and medical buildings. We would love to build a new school at Rubaya where mineral conflict led to massacres and instability and a school built by Comfort Congo with no resources is in desperate need of being replaced by proper classrooms. We are continuing to purchase by annual amounts the Kambize/Kisima school site.
In Rwanda most of the projects are working well with many of them expanding but there is nothing new on the horizon except the possibility of supporting Good News in vocational training.
There are any number of permutations to the requests for CIMS to expand from Uganda, DRC, South Sudan.
Finally the SKR/child support projects in Burundi and South Sudan are just touches the tip of the iceberg in terms of the levels of poverty and need there – we need to see both those projects grow in support and then we can look at other ways of supporting our partners to reach other needy people.
a little can change a life