Food Program for Children

Project location: Congo, Democratic Republic, Kemi Valley, Kinshasa
Project start date: September 2009 - Project end date: September 2011
Project number: 2009-25
Beneficiary: FIDESCO

 
The main objective of the project co-funded by the Nando Peretti Foundation is to get enough food for the children of the valley so that they are strong enough to go to school.
The second objective is to create a Cooperative which aim is to balance the budget and covers the costs of the food.

Three actions are planned:
• a mill has to be bought. This mill would be used to grind grains in order to make flower. Flower would be partly sold on the market and partly used for the nutrition program.
• Production of a nutritive mash, to be distributed to the children in the school sensibilization and formation of mothers into micro-management and fundamental hygiene

Through this project the children can live a more "normal" life without being forced to beg; they can go to school and are strong enough to follow the courses; for all people participating at the cooperative they can feed their family and sell flower to have a little additional income; the nutritional and hygienic formation will encourage the adults to send their children to school and to ameliorate the living conditions in the Valley; a balanced budget will be achieved after minimum 30 mothers to be formed and to be member of the cooperative.

FIDESCO is an international NGO that sends volunteers on mission across the world to place their skills at the service of development projects and other humanitarian activities.
FIDESCO's Projects are based on the principle of subsidiarity. All Projects of FIDESCO are in their conception and in practice for a limited period of time and they have to be conceived so that local institutions undertake the project in a mid term period of time. FIDESCO is not a big organisation but its projects are very successful. Today over a hundred FIDESCO Volunteers work in approximately thirty countries.
FIDESCO is a branch organization of the Emmanuel Community which has a network of motivated members in all countries where FIDESCO is engaged. Those Local volunteers are formed to be able to manage the projects on their own in a longer term.


Kinshasa (10 Million inhabitants) the capital of the DRC received in the last years thousands of refugees who already lost hope of returning back to their village of origin. Most of those refugees settled down in the Kemi Valley, an abandoned district, where it is to dangerous to live because of frequent rock falls on the cliffs on the border of the Kemi river, an open and stinking sewer.
The refugees have constructed small brick houses in the Valley, on the border of the river. They have no drinking water and rarely electricity. If they have electricity, it is all because of illegal connections on the ground. On rain season, the river overflows and floods the houses, provoking short circuits and electrocutions. The cliffs crumble slowly.
Two little schools have been founded in the Valley. There is a great lack of education for many children in this district.
The parents of those children are mostly uneducated and unemployed. Surviving on a low level with a little commerce. This is why most of those children are undernourished. Eating less than once a day some manioc. Those malnourished children have difficulties to learn at school and are tempted to quit the school for begging in the streets of Kinshasa in order to have food at least once a day.
A food program has been founded by FIDESCO Volunteers in close cooperation with the parents of the undernourished children.


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