SBV History
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History
The organisation was founded by Alexis ASUMANI BENGANTUNDU and Alphonse WASEKA KAMANGO. Alexis father died when he was only 10 years old and he decided early in life that he would help other orphans when he had money to share. In 1998, he was employed at Congo Customs where he started his work with orphans. Three children of the same family recieved his help for food, clothing and other expenses. |
Alphonse
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Alexis
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Hubert
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During 2003 Alexis and Alphonse met Hubert NTAWU an active Esperantist from Rutshuru.
Esperanto is a peaceful language for building friendship among all people.The language was created in 1887 specifically to unify humanity by peace and love. In our association, we are guided by love and consider humanity as our family and the world as our country. Consequently, SOLIDARITY GOODWILL has adopted the international language of peace, Esperanto, as the preferred language of dialogue, its working language. We always seeking to know how to bring peaceful cohabitation between different communities living in the North Kivu. Alphonse also decided to learn Esperanto and together he and Alexis established the Goma Esperanto Club, in 2003. |
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One year later they created SOLIDARITY GOODWILL . The Italian Pastor Duilio MAGNANI befriended Alexis and began providing substantial support for SOLIDARITY GOODWILL and soon 63 orphans were receiving regular help from the organization.. Thirty orphans were remotely « adopted » by Italians. . SOLIDARITY GOODWILL was legally established in 2004.
Sadly, the beloved Pastor died in 2010, and SOLIDARITY GOODWILL, after a series of struggles, had to reduce the number of supported children to 35. |
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Several members of SOLIDARITY GOODWILL received stipends from Pastro Duilio MAGNANI and three of them earned University degrees in law, agronomy and librarianship in 2008-2009. These were Etienne KATCHELEWA agronomist, Alphonse WASEKA lawyer kaj s-ino Marceline BORA, book-keeper.
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In 2004, the dutch philanthropist Hans BAKKER financially supported a seminar on Esperanto, in Goma okazu seminarion. It was lead by s-ro Jean Bosco MALAMDA from Kinshasa and at least 28 participants took part.
After the death of Hans Bakker, in 2015, his widow, Ans Bakker-ten Hagen continued to generously support the orphans of SBV for several more years.
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In 2012, Penelope VOS was asked to help make a website for SBV, while it was still struggling to cope with the loss of Pastro MAGNANI. She did, and started to support some students. She became a member of the board a couple of years later and visited all of the students and schools in person in both 2015 and 2018. After the 2015 visit, the supported number of children again reached the sixties and several university students were also supported. In 2017, SBV built and furnished a library at Rutuboko school, "Books for Eastern Congo" stocked it. The money for the building was donated by Penelope and the project supervised by Alphonse. The 2018 visit involved a whole month in Goma after which she was elected Vice-Prezident. |
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