We believe in holistic orphan care that starts by partnering with Congolese leaders who already desire to care for orphans and vulnerable families in their midst. These Congolese partners know the needs and possible solutions. Reeds of Hope seeks to empower the local leaders to provide the care necessary to help our children and families thrive. We work with a children’s home in Bukavu, Eastern DRC and employ two Congolese staff members to support these children with their education, mental, spiritual and physical well being. We provide sponsorships for the children to attend school and our staff carefully follow their progress. When possible, we collaborate with our local social worker to integrate the students we sponsor into Congolese families. Sometimes this can be done with a little support for the original family, other times it is with extended family, and still other times it is with a brand new family. This process of reintegration presents unique challenges, but we believe that children belong in families, not institutions.

Since 2015, we've partnered with families throughout eastern Congo. We seek to establish family permanency, independence, and sustainability. Of the 55-80 children we work with each year, we have reunified 25 of them with their extended family members or local, foster Congolese families. These families have been identified over the past three years because they are the children's nuclear or extended family or they are willing foster families. They have gone through extensive assessment for child safety, parenting, training, and counseling before being reunified with their children. While these families have been reunified with their children, their situations remain quite desperate. Our objectives include bringing the reunified families out of their situations of extreme poverty which led to family disruption in the first place. In addition, we continue one-on-one mentoring, small and large group counseling and continued regular monitoring of the child and familial health.  

We offer small business start-up capital along with a one-year-long business training through Alternativ Global Entrepreneurs. The family is monitored by our Congolese program manager as well as our Congolese social worker. In addition, Alternativ conducts data collection on each family's outcomes after the business training. Our social worker in Eastern DRC has conducted research into what kind of business each family could start, given their skills and their surroundings. Many of them have begun their new businesses thanks to business capital donations. However, sponsorship for family reunification is needed to fund all the continued one-on-one mentoring, business follow up, group sessions, health insurance of each family and costs of the Alternativ curriculum we use.

For the safety of our families, we do not post photos of their faces.

Newsletters with photo updates and more details are sent to donors!