Help1,700 survivors of flooding in Kinshasa-DRC

Brief Rapport on our activities with the victims of the flooding in Kinshasa the Democratic Republic of Congo

Introduction

After the flooding in Kinshasa which left out many survivors without help, the government and other humanitarian came and offered emergency aid relief to the survivors, and after that they were left alone without accompaniment in order to restore their lives. Despite these efforts deployed by humanitarian, still the main challenges remained and are not yet solved up to now: Mainly to rebuild their lives, to have a plot of land where to start a new life from and to get a livelihood activity in order to respond to their basic needs as well as build the infrastructure that was damaged.

Interventions

In all these main lasting solutions, we are involved in the helping the survivors to restore their livelihood activities. For this we developed and Small Business Model which is working well in the Eastern Part of DRC within the refugee communities.

We are looking forward to fundraise for money in order to extend this Business Model in to all the survivors of the flooding in Kinshasa. The idea is about identifying which business they are doing, document the gaps and the opportunities, then put people in a group of 20 which is led by a committee of 4 people elected by themselves. Then some money is given to each member of the group equally as top up to increase their business, then they come together once in week in order to save some money they agree upon themselves. The money they save each week is divided into two, 50% of the money is sent to the organization and kept there with the purpose to support others, and do other things for the growth of the business, the other 50% remains in the group, and themselves do decide how best they will use the money.

So far this model is working very well in Goma and people are very much involved in. The only challenge is that people do not know each other in order to trust themselves with money.

The other solution for the victims in Kinshasa is to build a strong fence on the banks of the river to ensure that water do not affect people, but also to plant trees and collect bottles in the area.

All these activities need funding which we do not have as per now and have left the survivors in a very difficult situation.

Our intention is to mobilize money and develop this economic activity in Kinshasa where all authorities are, and make it model for economic recovery of all who are victims of various disasters in DRC. Once this is done and moves on well, then we shall engage the authorities and other stakeholders to come and see the progress and suggest that similar activities are done in other places in order to solve the problem for all.

We really count on your generous contributions in order to make this project a reality.

Thanks

Jean Pascal Mugaruka