Nyalebe Community Alliance: Enabling Women in the DRC
Many thanks to Dennis Argall who passed along information about the Nyalebe Community Development Alliance, a wonderful endeavor to help women and children in the northeastern corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Mama Mado Beriu, the Chairperson of the Allliance writes,
“Women wake up very early to make breakfast, they go to the field, they have to come back with firewood and water then begin cooking while men just wake up take breakfast then go to the field after they come home and expect to find food ready.
After eating they just go drinking, in other words it is the women who does all the domestic work yet they do own a thing in the home… you will note that the issue of gender is never heard of in our part of the world.”
Mama Mado Beiru at work on a new sewing machine that will help economically empower women in the DRC. Photo with permission from the Nyalebe website.
The needs of girls are particularly critical,
“Many girls of girls of Nyalebe have been engaged in prostitution because when they drop out of school they do not have any stable source of income to sustain themselves. They end up going in for business which gives them a little money in return for sex. Then men later abandon them — sometimes when they are pregnant and or have been infected with HIV/AIDS. There has also been cases where girls who drop out go in for early marriage and after a few year things get bad and the men abandon them with babies. We believe that this project and others that will come will help assist such girls by giving a way of earning a living in a culturally accepted manner.”
Many thanks to Mama Mado Beriu for her important work and to Dennis Argall, who lives in Australia) for helping to foster meaningful connections across the globe.
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