ABOUT US

Congo Great Lakes Initiative* was established for the benefit of the people of central Africa and those of the Great Lakes region, both in Africa and in England and, in particular, those residing in the greater London Area, such as: Brent, City of Westminster, Camden, Islington, Wandsworth, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham.

We aim to achieve our objectives by:

1. Identifying and overcoming all barriers to education for children and young people victims of conflicts and other disadvantaged people.

2. Building schools and facilities for a thriving learning and career environment

3. Supporting schools in achieving standards of basic education

4. Training, motivating and helping to rebuild confidence of young people victims of post-conflict trauma and other disadvantaged children

5. Helping victims of rape and other disadvantaged people to gain skills to start small scale projects that can generate some income.

Organizing training sessions and intensive workshops to prepare next generations living in the region or abroad to peace culture; assuming that education, in its large extent, is the key for successful societies where justice, fairness, tolerance and freedom are the main values upon what they are built.

We do not have a permanent staff. We run the organisation on a volunteer basis. Having said this, we give part-time to people when funded or have sessional workers depending on the funding. We have 7 volunteers who have committed to offer some of their time on a regular basis but some are not regular and do help when we have activities or events.

We organise most of our activities around getting people ready to integrate in the UK society by providing sessions or workshops, and do a lot of work around helping parents and children to fight crime or antisocial behaviour. In the Congo, we help young people going back to education or special training and focus on victims of conflicts and disadvantaged people. In the UK, we have been funding most of our activities by ourselves and have just completed a project related to raped ladies, which inspired this current project after an evaluation.

*The organization was first named New Hope International, but later changed to Congo Great Lakes Initiative