Report from BHW DRC Partnership Facilitator Following Visit

Key person: Jean-Paul 

John-Paul came to Kampala, Uganda to visit us one morning we were there. We spent a couple of hours talking with him, trying to understand the situation. It is obvious that the projects we have undertaken with CHAM have failed. The key person on the ground in Beni, Kakule has gone to Lubero and is trying to survive the advances of the militia groups. However, it looks like he is going to have the shift again as the rebels are advancing on Lubero. 

After talking with him, we were both concerned that there were several issues that needed to be addressed. 

Partner Circumstances

Jean-Paul is Congolese but lives in Mukono, a city near Kampala. He runs CHAM ministry based on a vision from Ezekiel 47:1-12 about the church overflowing water to a river into the community. BHW has supported projects he has been overseeing in the DRC, mainly around Beni and Bunia. 

He and his family were attending a Methodist church up until 2020 when they left. He found that the church members were still very traditional and as well as attending church, had shrines to ancestors in their homes and associated witchcraft. He is from a brethren background in the DRC and as they were not observing the Lord’s Supper (communion), he tried to disciple them to do this but he failed and got offside with the church leaders. 

His wife had some health issues around that time which Jean-Paul put down to her being poisoned by some of the people in women’s ministry. She was very sick, and the hospital could not identify the problem, but she was badly coughing. The gossip around the community was that she was poisoned. She is now 98% recovered. Since then, they have focused on meeting with their own family church at home.

Because he has not been able to develop a project in Uganda, his employment visa is unlikely to be renewed, and they will probably have to move out of Uganda. The only two options are to return to the DR Congo or go to Kenya which is most likely. They have an opportunity with Vision Ministries out of Canada where he could be involved with training church leaders as that group has an established work in Nairobi. 

Their five children are all doing OK but unable to work in Uganda as they are not citizens. They all have ideas but cannot do anything with them right now. 

Context

In the area of Beni, they have been involved with the local churches to impact the community using a holistic approach to help people become self-sustaining. They had some funding from the World Bank to build a clinic and school and had 50 acres of land purchased to run agriculture programmes. Funding for these has stopped and the clinic is struggling to obtain medical supplies.

The programme to economically empower people has suffered due to the rebel conflicts in the area. People have been fleeing the area and moving to safer areas. Of the original 40 families that were helped only 15 have remained in the area. Many of the people involved have been recruited by the government army to fight against the rebels.

Recent Events

Activities

With the people fleeing Beni, most moved to the areas of Bunia and Komanda. In association with Bridgeway, a US NGO, they started an empowerment programme in June 2023 which ran for one year. With the funds from Bright Hope World (US$7,500) and Bridgeway (US$20,000) added together they started to help 400 people who are all victims of the internal war between the government forces and rebel militias. 100 of them are in Komanda and 300 in Bunia. A man, Uzele, who Jean-Paul has known for a long time is the man on the ground making sure the project is operating. The focus is on displaced people in these areas.

The programme has these elements to it:

• People were trained in how to keep household scraps to create animal feed. They have then been dropping these items off to ten locations where they are collected and processed.

• Agricultural training to grow vegetable gardens in the areas where the displaced people are hosted by local community families. They have focused on short term vegetables such as eggplant, cabbage and amaranth which they can eat some and sell some to provide funds for the family. They were given seeds and some insecticides. Two paid agricultural officers were involved in the programme to train and follow up all the families.

• Livestock programme: They purchased the following livestock and held them at a central place to breed with the aim to give at least one of each animal to the 400 families by December 2024. By the end of July, they had successfully given out to 75% of the women and 24% of the men.
- 40 pigs
- 80 rabbits
- 80 ducks
- 10 goats

Partnership's Influence within the Community

Jean-Paul tells us that the current empowerment programme is the vision of the local community, so they are very much involved in the success of this programme. By the end of this year all of the families will have received one of each of the animals. 

This project has significantly changed the humanitarian situation of most beneficiaries. Before the project, they had difficulty having any idea of what they can be or become but with this project, each person can define what they can do or be by the end of the year 2024. As an example, since the different harvests of agricultural products, the diet of beneficiary households is not only balanced but also grown by at least 2,500 calories per day. The beneficiary households saw the diet of the members of their households increase based on their agricultural harvest. Their children continue to attend school even though they were initially out of school. In addition, they now access primary health care through mutual health insurance to which their families have joined thanks to the income generated by this project for their parents. 

Current Issues and Challenges

There is uncertainty about where the family will live when their Uganda visa expires. 

BHW is not sure about what the future of this partnership will be. There is currently no clear project on the table. 

There is a huge deficit of discipleship in the churches. Superstition and fear are predominant even for Christians. 

Prayer and Praise Points

1) That peace will come to this region.
2) This project is helping 400 families become self-sustaining. That the impact of this will continue after the funding stops.
3) For Jean-Paul and his wife as they pray about where they will live in the future. 

Comments

The Bridgeway organisation from the US is not a Christian organization. In saying that, many of those being assisted are Christians. They employ local people to follow up on the project. Jean-Paul has just sent in a report to them after the first year, and currently does not know if they will fund it again.

We are in dialogue with Jean-Paul as there is so much uncertainty around the situation in the DRC and also the family circumstances. At this stage no further funds will be sent.