Women’s Center
BUKAVU WOMEN TRAUMA HEALING CENTER
I. Mission Statement
The mission of BWTHC is to help the women of BWTHC to be healed from their past experiences, become independent and self-sufficient through achieving the 3 A’s (in English):
-Self-education of the women among themselves
-Mutual self-financing of the women
-Self-development of the women
In order to achieve this Mission, BWTHC believes it is necessary to support the women in 5 fundamental ways that we call Approaches:
II. Approaches:
a) The Center will help women victims of all sorts of abuses and violence:
1. Recover psychologically from their trauma in order to regain their self-worth and belief in their abilities
2. Enjoy good health for themselves and their children in order to be able to physically support their families.
3. Possess the means by which to earn an income in order to support themselves and their families financially.
4. Achieve a basic level of education for themselves and their children to enable them to operate independently in society.
5. Have access to housing to ensure a safe and healthy environment for themselves ( to work and to live ) and their families.
b) Explaining the Approaches:
The Approach
What will the Women’s Center do to help women achieve this?
1. Counseling : to help them cope with the trauma for recovering psychologically and regain their sense of self-worth and their belief in their own abilities.
/ Short term approach
2- Nursing/health: how to ensure preventive measures for good health for women and their children, / Medium term approach
3- Skills training: What skills can enable women to earn a reasonable living., / Short term approach
4- Microfinance/microcredit: access to small loans to help them start small businesses can be an extremely successful way to empower women: /
Medium term approach
5. Education/Childcare: enable to women to earn a living while their children are being cared for / Medium term approach
6. Housing : women who come to Bukavu often have no where to go, many of them end up living all over Bukavu
a. Need of a Office of the women Centre where all the activities will take place / Medium term approach
b. Need of a place as a transit center where women could be housed while waiting to go back home: / Long term approach
7- Sales support: Can the Center own a store or other outlet that will help the women sell their goods? - This will be incorporated in the Built center- Long term.
III. Core Values
The Bukavu Women’s Trauma and Healing center recognizes that there are many ways in which to approach the above Mission Statement. However, it is important to BWTHC to conduct its operations in a manner consistent with the following Core Values:
1. Abused women first – The reason for existence of the BWTHC is to help survivors of sexual violence in Eastern DRC. The BWTHC will act in accordance with their best interests at all times.
2. Self-reliance – BWTHC believes in helping women become strong and independent, capable of prospering without relying on the charity of others. The BWTHC wants the same for itself—to be independent and self-sufficient. In this respect, the BWTHC will work to create a self-supporting atmosphere where all members involved contribute to the success of the organization.
BWTHC also recognizes that just as it will provide skills training to the women to help them achieve the goal of self-sufficiency, the BWTHC can also benefit from training and support in areas where it has room to learn from others.
In these situations, BWTHC will build relationships with outside individuals and organizations with the intention of building internal capabilities that will enable BWTHC to best achieve its Mission Statement.
Furthermore, the BWTHC recognizes that there are times when BWTHC will not have the full capabilities to support the needs of the women. In these cases, BWTHC will seek external partners who can meet the women’s needs.
3. Sustainability – BWTHC is committed to long-term solutions. The BWTHC does not seek temporary fixes that will ultimately come undone. And while it recognizes the need for short-term planning, its goal is to develop a model that is sustainable over the long-term.
Tools
a. Funding: The Center needs to help women become self-sustaining and help itself be also self-sustaining, it needs 330 US / month:
- Rely on donor for a certain time( Two years)
- Ask the women to contribute from services gained at the center
- Start income-generating activities for the center : raise pigs, chickens, crops, children’s book.
- Get some services to other partners, organizations
b. Physical Resources:
- Will the center wants to rent or buy a space? Rent for two years but have its own place in 3 – 5 years.
- Do we need to be able to providing housing? For a short period of time/ Transit
- Do we need space for crops and animals? Yes, in the villages.
c. Capabilities:
- How will the Committee make sure the right capabilities exist to support the approach? - Need of studies on the field and learning by doing, the experience we have now can definitely guide us.
d. Partnerships: there are ways for the Trauma and Healing Center to collaborate with other groups in mutually-beneficial ways without any group having to change their visions one bit. – We have realized the need of such partnership and have considered enter into partnership with Congo International Ministries in Health and counseilling. We will see which other organization we can partner with in the future in other sectors.
e. Scale: - For the moment we are going to use a very small space but in the future we consider to have a big center for women a kind of a “Village of Women” which will be a refuge center for women who have been discriminated, victims of violence, abuse, forced marriage….
This is the suggestion:
First house : - 2 big Room for Skills training and literacy matters
- 2 big rooms for soap making and other manufacturing
- 2 big rooms for Selling and stocking of materials
2nd House: - 1 Room for reception and secretary
- 1 Room for the director and the accountant
3rd House: - 5 Rooms for women transit: with 10 beds
- Kitchen and Dining room
4th House: - 1 big Room for cultural events and healing lessons
- 1 room for social, legal and other departments
5th House: - 2 rooms for clinic consultation and reception
- 1 big room for patients (hospitalization)
- 2 Rooms for maternity and midwives
- 1 room for pharmacy
- 2 Rooms for doctors and nurses
Strategy of the project: the three A’s!
This project rests on three essential pillars, which constitute its strategy: A - A - A:
in French, that is… Auto-éducation, Auto-financement, Auto-développement
In English:
Self-education of the women among themselves
Mutual self-financing of the women
Self-development of the woman.
The project will be organized on three different levels which aim at the personal emancipation of the woman:
1. Cooperative of the daughters: At this ‘daughter’ level the women will be trained in dressmaking. After acquiring the diploma of dressmaking, the daughter will be committed to teaching another woman.
2.Cooperative of Mothers: After having trained a daughter, the ‘daughter’ who has done the traingin will be able to belong to the family of the ‘Mothers’ and will be entitled to a loan to begin an income-generating activity on behalf of the community: soap making, scent making, bread making etc.
3. Cooperative of Grandmothers: At this ‘grandmother’ level the woman can start to work for itself now and will be able to have the permission to begin another trauma healing and care centre elsewhere and to become independent.
Structure of the project
The Women’s Centre is a project of Fondation Chirezi therefore it will use all authorizations of the organization in dealing with administrative matters. However the project is managed entirely by a committee of the women chaired by a director appointed by the management of Fondation Chirezi. The director of the Center has to be only a woman and ¾ of the staffs at the Center have to be women.
The situation of the woman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
The woman of Congo was regarded for a long time as a being of no importance — since long ago in the history of my country.
The customs and cultures of the several tribes and ethnic groups here deprived the woman of her paramount rights to the extent of regarding her as an animal to be sold and exchange between families.
Although there was not much rape in historical communities, the heavy work, the forced marriages, slavery in the society and in households weighed much on the Congolese woman in old times.
Social customs impacting on the woman served the egoistic interests of the male sex and reinforced the domination of men over women.
Today the situation of the woman has not improved — it has worsened.
Rape and violence, unknown in earlier times, have grown in our society.
These things have become extreme:
• the rape of small, five year old girls,
• the kidnapping of girls into armies,
• pack rape,
• the use of the woman like animal of fields,
• the use of the woman like shields by armies
in wars, tribal and ethnic…
in short a dark panorama
• of a woman without defence,
• completely dependent on the man and his family,
• without rights of inheritance
—neither after the death of his/her father,
nor after the death of her husband.
It is this woman whom we want to help,
frustrated a long time without resources,
who is the lung of the family economy
Imagine the prospects for our country…
when there is recognition of woman’s rights
and her proper place in society.
Why have I taken up the cause of the woman of Bukavu?
I engaged in this fight because I am convinced that it is by the woman that the development of this country is possible.
Only the woman does not engage in the corruption which devastates D.R. Congo, only the woman does not run off, only the woman nourishes the family, only the woman is conscious of the offspring in the community…
It is still this woman who is hunted and imprisoned by the selfishness and the cruelty of the man.
If I militate is to release the woman of the yoke of slavery in which she has been locked up for a long time. I invite women everywhere to rise up with me to give to the woman of Bukavu the possibility of rising up and becoming independent.
I know that the women of Bukavu and Congo in general are able to rise if one gives them the possibility of putting themselves upright.
The Women’s Trauma Healing and Care Centre is a project which wants to bring to the woman an opportunity and a place to cure their lasting wounds and give them a chance economically… to work in order to be independent.
This project is not a project which wants to depend on Western countries, or tighten the hand of the external assistance forever. It is a project which requests the support of friends outside to help us start.
We seek partners as companions, to guide us and show the way to be followed.
We aim for eventual independent financing, by the women themselves.
The story of the person who started the Bukavu Women Trauma Healing Center: Amina Gisèle
My story, my commitment
by project director Amina Gisèle
I was born in a corner of the world whose name is almost unknown to most people. I grew up in an environment which was not always favourable to the normal development of a girl.
My mother said to me that the day when I was born was a fine day for the world, shining with a sun whose rays colored the horizons.
That day, December 18, 1980 is engraved in the annals of the world as the day which saw me for the first time alive.
From my earliest years, my mother said to me that I grew well and that I smiled at each day and at the winds from the four points of the compass.
If I made the primary school without major problem, it was not thus in the secondary school.
I lost my father before I finished school. The difficulties in paying school expenses, clothing me and having enough to eat multiplied then.
The day when I got my diploma was also a great day: a crowning success years of dedicated hard work for me!
However, suffering did not end; the shocks of life continued.
Nothing of the life of suffering was strange to me:
the suffering of the children of the street, of the orphans, violated women and people without value…
To meet my husband Floribert put new breath in my existence.
He is my absolute support today and I am a whole person.
Social work that we undertake together, in FOCHI – for the children of Kiliba and the women of Bukavu – is for us an opportunity to create a difference and provide a good example in this egoistic and savage world.