Family Support & preservation

We believe in holistic orphan care that starts by partnering with Congolese leaders who already care for orphans and vulnerable families in their midst, and know the needs and possible solutions. We work with a children’s home in Bukavu, Eastern DRC and local schools. Our three Congolese staff members 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 orphaned 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. We have reunified 25 of our children with their extended family members or local, foster Congolese families. Families have gone through extensive assessments for child safety, parenting, training, and counseling. Our objectives include bringing the foster or reunified families out of their situations of extreme poverty which often leads 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 familial health.

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

We offer small business start-up capital along with 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 support and preservation 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.