video of one world adoption services orpanange

This is a link to our adoption agency, about half way down the page you will find a video of the orphanage we will be adopting from in Kinshasa, Congo.


click here

westerners will never be the 'saviors' of africa

By: Ben Affleck

I was thrilled to watch the KONY 2012 video. I began traveling to LRA territory in northern Uganda and Congo in 2007 and I have seen first-hand the anguish and pain their atrocities have left behind. While in Gulu, Northern Uganda, I visited a site run by Healing Hands where I sat down with more than a hundred LRA abductees. It was there that a young man told me of being forced by the LRA at gunpoint to kill his mother, father and siblings and then being abducted to serve as an LRA soldier. I was awed by the courage, resilience and determination in these children -- and I was inspired to do what I could to help others like them.

The LRA conflict in Uganda has now ended. Today northeastern Congo bears the brunt of LRA activity (alongside Central African Republic and South Sudan) -- and it was in Congo, several years ago, where the LRA's 'Christmas massacre' took the lives of 400 civilians, and made refugees out of 20,000 more.

Last month, I was in Dungu (in far northeastern Congo) where the LRA militias remain active. I met scores of villagers who had suffered from recent attacks. The local UN military base 'threat level' was four out of five ("five means all-out war," I was told). Just last month several thousand citizens in the region were displaced and several people were killed.

I believe there is no mission more urgent than to help children who are suffering and I applaud Invisible Children for raising the awareness of Kony (and the issue of child soldiers) to such an extraordinary level. The next step after awareness is action. There are many steps that we can take to end this nightmare. Among the most important is funding remarkable local organizations.

Westerners are not and will never be the 'saviors' of Africa. That idea has been tried and found wanting. It is ineffectual at best and deadly at worst. The organization I founded, Eastern Congo Initiative, funds Congolese-led organizations that rescue child soldiers from the bush and provides them with education, medical assistance, job training, and counseling. We support the work being done by highly capable and determined Congolese, to make their communities a better place.

Joseph Kony has been one of the most infamous and most wanted men in Africa for decades. His vicious cruelty has caused untold pain over the last twenty years. Because of Invisible Children, a hundred million more people in North America now know his story.

Joseph Kony must be caught. His lieutenants must be brought to justice and the LRA abductees still in the bush -- fighting against their will -- must be rescued and rehabilitated.

Yet, Kony isn't the whole story. The lack of state security in Congo has made room not only for the LRA, but for dozens of militia groups (including those responsible for the Rwandan genocide -- the FDLR -- and the Al-Shabab affiliated, ADF) who commit violence with impunity, steal from the population, and extract minerals from the earth -effectively robbing the entire country.

Security must be restored in the Congo. The Congolese military (FARDC) must be trained and held accountable -- and it must be purged of criminals. The justice system must be expanded and strengthened so it has the confidence of the people. This will result in a much more peaceful, stable and prosperous Congo and region.

This work may seem impossible but it is critical to remember what a disastrous state Congo was in fifteen years ago. It was ground zero in the deadliest war in modern African history. Eight nations had troops in Congo. Now, the country is on the brink of democracy and peace. But the daunting final steps require cooperation between regional governments and international organizations to get to the finish line. The AU, EU, US, IMF and important local players can help resolve this issue by responding to exactly the kind of awareness and pressure that Invisible Children has brought to bear around the issue of Kony and the LRA.

I urge Invisible Children to embrace the opportunity before them and influence the million + who have been exposed to this important issue by pointing advocates to the eye of the storm where war and abducting children is still happening: Congo.

Today, UNICEF estimates that at least 3,000 children are still held by the many different militia groups in Congo.

little victories

Congo warlord Thomas Lubanga convicted of using child soldiers

International criminal court delivers first verdict in its 10-year history to find rebel militia leader guilty of snatching children

• David Smith in Johannesburg
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 March 2012 06.36 EDT

The international criminal court has delivered the first verdict in its 10-year history, finding a Congolese warlord guilty of recruiting child soldiers.

Thomas Lubanga was convicted of snatching children from the street and turning them into killers. He showed no emotion as the presiding judge, Adrian Fulford, read out the verdict.

In a unanimous decision, the three judges said evidence proved that as head of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) and its military wing, Lubanga had been responsible for the conscription of child soldiers active on the frontline.

He now faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The court cannot impose the death penalty.

James Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, welcomed the announcement. "The judgment is an important step forward in the worldwide struggle against impunity for grave crimes," he said.

Prosecutors had alleged that Lubanga, 51, was using a rebel militia to dominate the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo's Ituri region, home to one of the world's most lucrative gold reserves.

Children as young as 11 were recruited from their homes and schools to take part in brutal ethnic fighting in 2002-03. They were taken to military training camps and beaten and drugged; girls were used as sex slaves.

Lubanga went on trial in January 2009. Closing arguments were heard last August. Lubanga had pleaded innocent to charges of war crimes.

The ICC, the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, opened in July 2002 to prosecute the perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Progress has been too slow, in the eyes of critics. Lubanga, seen as a small fish compared with the likes of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, was first transferred to the ICC headquarters at The Hague six years ago.

Backed by 120 countries – but neither China nor the US – the ICC has launched investigations in seven conflict regions, all of them African, since it opened.

The court has no police force, relying instead on the support of states to deliver suspects for trial. Last December, Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo became the first former head of state to appear at the ICC.

The verdict is also the first at an international trial focused exclusively on the use of child soldiers.

The case will set legal precedents that could be used if Joseph Kony, the elusive leader of the Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army, is captured and brought to justice.

see the video here.

joseph kony in the DRC

Thanks to the "KONY 2012" video made by the San Diego-based organization Invisible Children, millions of people are suddenly interested in humanitarian crises in Central Africa. This is great news, but the challenge now is to translate that concern into constructive activism.

Joseph Kony has led the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) since the mid-1980s. He created it from the remnants of a quasi-Christian movement led by the mystic and spiritual leader Alice Auma; its early followers opposed the marginalization of the Acholi people in northern Uganda by the government of Yoweri Museveni. At times the LRA was supported by the government of neighboring Sudan, as retaliation for Museveni's support of rebels there.

From 1987 to 2006, the LRA attacked and murdered civilians in northern Uganda. More than two million people were uprooted from their homes and most ended up living in camps that lacked food, clean water, and sanitation. Over the course of the conflict, tens of thousands of children were abducted and turned into soldiers, porters, cooks, laundresses, or sex slaves. Many were killed or forced to harm or kill others, including their own relatives. Some eventually escaped.

To protect their children from abduction by the LRA, parents in the countryside often sent them to sleep in the relative safety of nearby towns. Every night, children could be seen walking into towns. Hundreds of these "night commuters" would march for miles before bedding down in schools or churches or under storefront awnings. Community leaders and aid workers tried to protect them, not just from abduction but also from other threats such as harassment, exploitation, and rape. The phenomenon was only one among many tragic symptoms of a shattered society.

In 2006, a ceasefire agreement between the LRA and the government brought relative peace to northern Uganda. The vast majority of people living in camps have gone back home to their villages and are beginning to support themselves again. If the war has stopped, however, its legacy remains. State services have not recovered and the Ugandan government still needs a great deal of technical and financial assistance. At this point, my organization, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), continues its work in northern Uganda while focusing mainly on the unique needs of women and girls -- training health workers to provide clinical care to survivors of sexual assault, running programs to promote women's social and economic empowerment, and supporting the government's efforts to rebuild effective institutions.

For its part, the LRA, having retreated from northern Uganda, has moved on to neighboring countries, with its few hundred remaining members attacking isolated populations in the near-impenetrable area at the intersection of South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the Central African Republic. In July 2011, Oxfam of Great Britain carried out a survey in northeast DRC which revealed how fearful people there were of LRA attacks. Oxfam called for reform of the Congolese army, more UN peacekeepers, and more support for communication and infrastructure projects in order to make communities less vulnerable. Last October, President Barack Obama approved sending U.S. military advisors to work with the Ugandan and other armed forces in the area to rout the LRA, but for now Kony remains at large.

The LRA is still a problem, particularly for people in the impoverished far corners of the territory it plagues, but today pressing humanitarian crises on the continent in the Horn of Africa, South Sudan, and the east of the DRC affect many more people. In the Horn, the famine conditions in southern Somalia ended in February, but more than 2 million people throughout the country remain in crisis, unable to feed themselves. Somalis who fled to Kenya and Ethiopia to live in overcrowded camps, or who are hiding in cities, need aid and protection. South Sudan, the world's newest country, may also be its most fragile, and fighting in several of Sudan's border areas is making the situation worse. The DRC has been engulfed in conflict for over a decade, and needs help recovering and rebuilding. In eastern Congo, rape has been used as a weapon of war; programs are needed to not only help the victims of sexual violence but to prevent attacks in the first place.

As with the LRA, all these situations are complex and intractable, with no quick or easy solutions available. Outsiders, moreover, can at best play only a secondary role in resolving them, providing some relief and supporting the efforts of locals to move their countries in a more promising direction. But callousness and fatalism are simply not options for moral people, and there are things you can and should do that can make a real difference.

when helping hurts

I would like to share a blog post written by someone on our Congo Mission trip team.
Ericka has been doing a lot of research for the trip and I am always interested when she reads something that affects her so much she must share it with our group.


Check out When Helping Hurts here.

cries unheard

By Laura Heffner | THE EASTERN ECHO
Added March 11, 2012 at 7:27 pm

“Imagine you are a woman making dinner for your family when a militia group barges into your home and says they are going to rape you in front of your husband and children,” said guest speaker Carrie Crawford in a lecture that was part of Women’s History Month.

“Imagine you are the husband and the militia says that if you try and stop them they will kill you and your whole family,” she said. “That is what has been happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past 20 years as neighboring countries have come to steal the wealth of natural resources found there.”

Crawford’s lecture Wednesday was entitled “A Salute to Women of the Congo: Courage and Resistance in the face of Impunity.” Crawford is an attorney who advocates for immigrant rights in the United States and has worked many cases relating to humanitarian international law. She is also the co-founder and chair of Friends of the Congo, a non-profit advocacy group working with the Congolese to bring about change and peace that will last.

Many people know about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda thanks to the Oscar nominated film “Hotel Rwanda” released in 2004 starring Don Cheadle. Many people also know about the genocide that took place in Darfur, Sudan in 2003 thanks to actor/director George Clooney’s publicity of it.

The 24-year war in Uganda led by the Lord Resistance Army’s (LRA) leader Joseph Kony, who has been kidnapping children to turn boys into soldiers and girls into sex slaves has gone viral with the Invisible Children video “Kony 2012” calling for his arrest for crimes against humanity.

The Congo, however, has largely been ignored.

“Congo sits in the heart of Africa. It is the heart of Africa,” Crawford said. It is a land rich in beauty and resources. 
It is also the country with the highest numbers of rapes and violence against women.

According to Crawford, there are an estimated 21 armed groups operating in the DRC, and on any given day in the east, armed groups of around five men will come bursting into homes and rape women and young girls, sometimes mutilating them or kidnapping them to use as sex slaves.

This kind of violence has been described as a kind of biological warfare that is inexpensive and has little danger to the attackers.

These Rapes with Extreme Violence, or REVs, are designed to rob women of their humanity by mutilating their genitals, purposely infecting them with STDs and HIV, or trying to impregnate women in an attempt at ethnic cleansing to make sure Congolese women only have babies by non-Congolese men.

REVs are weapons of mass terror meant to demoralize, displace and terrorize whole communities.

Hutu militia groups who fled Rwanda after the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) gained control of the capitol and country during the 1994 conflict were pursued by the RPF who invaded Congo to fight the Hutus.

Rwanda’s civil war is being fought on the backs of Congolese women who have paid for it with their bodies.

Joseph Kony and his LRA have also invaded Congo and committed the same crimes of humanity against Congolese women and children they committed in their own country of Uganda.

Why are Congo’s neighbors invading, terrorizing and dehumanizing the people of the Congo? It is because the Democratic Republic of Congo is rich in natural resources like gold, silver, copper, diamonds and coltan, a heat resistant mineral used in many electronic devices like cell phones, computers and electronic devices.

For the people responsible for the estimated 1,100 rapes a month, there are no consequences.

There have been over 400,000 rapes in the past 20 years and over 6 million Congolese who have been killed by militia groups from neighboring countries like Rwanda and Uganda.

EMU student Olivia Mateso Mbala-Nkanga said, “There are not enough people who know about what’s going on in the Congo.”

Director of Diversity for EMU’s student government, Mbala-Nkanga knows first-hand what is going on in the Congo because she 
is Congolese and lived there in the ’90s as a child.

Her father left Congo in 1998 for a job at the University of Michigan, but it would be two years before family members were able to smuggle Mbala-Nkanga out of the country with her mother and siblings during a cease-fire in 2000. They traveled to the United Sates, where they were reunited with her father.

Mbala-Nkanga is studying international affairs and hopes to help bring about change in the Congo.

She said she cannot live her life in peace and freedom in the United States knowing what has been happening in Congo.

“I would feel so guilty if I did nothing to help the people of Congo,” Mbala-Nkanga said.

She explained that unlike the civil wars of Uganda and Rwanda, the war in Congo is not a civil war, but an invasion and an 
overflow of conflicts of neighboring countries into the Congo that are terrorizing the people of Congo.

According to Crawford, “A solution has not been found because no one is listening to the Congolese.”

insight

My husband found this and shared it with me. I really enjoyed it and thought you all may as well.

The Mayonnaise Jar and Two Cups of Coffee

When things in your lives seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed."Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions--and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.The sand is everything else--the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you."Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

update-congo mission trip

After much research and many prayers I am sad to announce that I will not be going to Congo in 2012. After discussing it with my OB, family doctor, and mission team, Evan and I realized that this was a decision we would have to make. There were many factors up for discussion. Some of which included, having to be very carful not to get too close with the children, worrying about everything I eat and drink, the risk of getting malaria, and the antimalarial medication needed for the trip.

We have decided that the risks out weigh the benefit I could help bring to these children this year.

How amazing is it that God used this mission trip to and all Evan and I have learned about Congo to have us adopt a child!?

I will still be just as much a part of this mission, except I will not be getting on that plane. Thankfully, Evan will still be going on the mission and I can't wait to hear all about it when he gets back. Another positive, now that I have decided not to go, the money I had raised finished funding his trip and helped out our team fundraising too.