Support small busness to 250 refugee women in DRC

Expanding this Project to South Kivu, Tanganyika Provinces and to refugee camps in Burundi. The best and sustainable approach is supporting local initiatives at the community level.

Refugee women continue to strive and are still active in various ways in order to survive and help their children at least to eat.

As the current war hit Goma and Bukavu, we observed the movement of both refugee women and Congolese women towards Uvira in South Kivu and in Kalemie Tanganyika where they are all in camps but also another group crossed the border and entered Burundi where they are now living in refugee camps, actually Burundi has received a big number of Congolese since this year started.

With current Trump’s Administration of stopping relief aid, we have actually released that most of international relief organizations depended on the USA funding in order to operate. Currently many NGOs have stopped working claiming they do not have funds, and others just have left many parts in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

In this situation women economic resilience becomes the only option in order to survive in camps and face this dire life in IDP Camps. In each camp and each setting we have so far visited there is economic opportunities and most of small trade and small businesses in all camps are being done by women.

In Kalemie for example, this IDP camp was put here in March but as now here are the economic activities IDP women are involved in to solve the problem and provide solutions to the shortage in their camp. This also to survive by getting some money in this situation where there is no relief aid anymore.

The question is now how best to amplify what they doing and support them to move forward in order to become economically independent. This is our task.