Recurrent wars have produced many terrible consequences such as:
Why? We feel that the solutions which exist do not give results because they are not institutionalized. In spite of the good will and millions invested by associations and NGO's fighting crime, children’s wandering, fighting wars, these will not be sufficient to eradicate those kinds of things. We need education to institutionalize ideas of rights and wrongs, as we know that a man who is warned never reacts like the one who is not warned.
So we have worked to devise a cure which will help North Kivu so that development may be restored.
Goma town was selected to implement our project because, despite the wars, the town is relatively protected compared with the surrounding countryside.
- Divisions between the different tribes and communities of the province. This tribalism, or clanism, promotes crime and obstructs cooperative efforts to improve conditions.
- The loss of parents and other carers for children produces many orphans and young illiterates lacking opportunity and motivation to study.
- Raped widows and unmarried girls who have given birth to children are neither well respected nor well protected by the society,
- Children have been taken in the armed conflicts by force, ostensibly to protect communities, but often those in power misuse those positions to dominate others and deprive them of their liberties.
- Young people who have missed out on normal schooling often stay remain idle and are not well equipped to contribute to society. Prostitution has become a means of living, in spite of the HIV/AIDS risk, for many of them.
- Many boys, in despair of better options, have become bandits, using arms to gain drugs, or enlisting themselves in armed groups which commit serious violence and other infringements of human rights, destroying what little peace remains in this region.
Why? We feel that the solutions which exist do not give results because they are not institutionalized. In spite of the good will and millions invested by associations and NGO's fighting crime, children’s wandering, fighting wars, these will not be sufficient to eradicate those kinds of things. We need education to institutionalize ideas of rights and wrongs, as we know that a man who is warned never reacts like the one who is not warned.
So we have worked to devise a cure which will help North Kivu so that development may be restored.
Goma town was selected to implement our project because, despite the wars, the town is relatively protected compared with the surrounding countryside.