Congolese children educated thanks to your generosity

The effervescence that surrounds us at the start of the school year only revives painful memories for Julienne Mpemba. On several occasions, she was expelled from the public school where she was enrolled in the Congo: her mother did not have enough to pay the school fees. The financial situation of the DRC having further deteriorated, there are thousands of children, not attending school, who hang around in the streets today. In 2008, with other people aware of the plight of the Congolese, she launched the non-profit organization Tumaini. Tumaini means "to hope" in Swahili. By paying 125 € per year, the price of a sponsorship, a child is guaranteed to go to school for a whole year. In October, Julienne Mpemba will leave Namur where she lives for a few months for the Congo. She is going to settle in Kinshasa, a relay office with the association. On September 11, the non-profit association Tumaini is organizing a dinner in Belgrade. This is also about raising funds to help children.

Julienne Mpemba has been living in Namur for several years now. There are memories that she is not ready to erase from her memory. Fatherless when she was still a child, she experienced the harsh reality of life. She says: "Until the death of dad, I was enrolled in a posh school where I learned a lot of things. The teaching there was excellent, that's how I had a very good foundation in French as in mathematics." A paying school of course. When the mother finds herself alone with her children, it is no longer possible for Julienne to follow her schooling in such a privileged establishment.“I was enrolled in a less famous but still good quality public school. We were more than 40 children in a class. Several times I was expelled from school because mum had not paid school fees. functioning. I would come home and the next day I would go back to school with the money. I have classmates who have never been able to return to school for lack of means and today they had in primary school. It's revolting. In my time, at the end of the 1980s, children in my situation had five or six in a class. Now it's much worse: it's the half of a class that is affected."A class where 60 children attend classes. There are so many of them that some school children take lessons from 7:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and others from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The following week, we reverse.

Buy your bench

"Not to continue your studies for lack of financial means, it's horrible, says Julienne Mpemba. I had a friend who was a hit during the preparation for university but he was so poor that his parents could not pay the school fees. He would have been a perfect lawyer, his case still haunts me today."But it is well before the university that the door of the school is difficult to cross. Thus, a child can only be registered, in kindergarten, in private and it is of course paying. Many therefore only enter school at the age of 6 without having learned the basics.

We still come to situations that could be laughable if behind there was not such disarray. So that her daughter can follow her schooling, Julienne's mother will go to a carpenter whom she will ask to build a bench. The school accepted Julienne but there was no more seating! She went to school with her bench stuck it in front of the teacher's desk and she took her lessons.

Returning to the DRC, Julienne Mpemba contacted that the situation had deteriorated further so, with knowledge sensitive to this cause, she founded Tumaini. The non-profit organization thanks to the financial intervention of godfathers and godmothers helps the children to go to school. The generous donors receive, in return, a file with the child's name, address and report card. They can thus follow it remotely. It is estimated that 125 euros will be needed to finance one year of lessons. More than forty children benefit from this intervention. Julienne Mpemba is convinced that we can still do better, much better. A call is therefore launched to all those who would like to support these little ones.

The needs are enormous and it is not just the children of Kinshasa who are affected, it is the whole of the Congo. So Julienne Mpemba is going to leave for six months in order to set up an office which would be a relay between the Tumaini association and the local associations. "I want to find people I trust to work with us," explains the young woman.

Abandoned children

The non-profit organization Tumaini also intends to invest in the adoption of Congolese children. “ For the moment, the situation is atrocious. Children born as a result of rape are systematically abandoned, sometimes in the middle of the street. Anyone can take them. the baby. There,The objective of the Tumaini association is to open a nursery to welcome these abandoned children. Another objective is to set up training schools. Technical or vocational schools do not exist in the DRC.

In the medium term, Julienne Mpemba plans to leave Namur where she lives: "I feel more useful there than here." The work of the ASBL Tumaini will continue here in Belgium where there are generous donors. It is Géraldine Mathieu, legal secretary of the association and professor of family law at the faculties of Namur (the photo with Julienne Mpemba) who will take the reins.

In the meantime, the association is looking for funds. One way to support Tumaini is to participate in the dinner organized on September 11 at the Do Bia Bouquet room in Belgrade. From 6:30 p.m. welcome, then aperitif, African meal and African dance party, too. During the aperitif, six young people will tell the turbulent history of this very beautiful country.

Christine Bolinne

For more information on the association and the dinner: 0477/88.58.41.

If you want to help Tumaini ASBL: 001-5722937-13