AGIR’s New Year 2025 Kickoff!
Greeting the new year as a team is an important part of looking at the past and planning for the future. The collage above is a vision board AGIR created at their kickoff meeting. It conveys their hopes and illustrates how they work together and with communities.
Meeting challenges faced by their communities.
Eastern Congo has a 33-year history of repeated conflicts based on political rivalries and economic interests. Those interests intensify and exacerbate divisions between ethnicities. As a result, people have been displaced by armed groups again and again. The latest round began in 2021 and culminated in over a million people displaced internally around Goma in North Kivu alone, an estimated 7 million internally displaced in DRC for various conflicts.
At the end of January, Goma was occupied a rebel coalition between The Congo River Alliance and M23 [AFC/M23]. There was a pitched battle in the city and retreating forces left behind munitions as they fled. Opportunists gathered the weapons, responding to the central government’s order to form a resistance. The result was disastrous. Thousands of civilians were killed. Hospitals and health centers, businesses and homes were looted and many foreign humanitarian organizations [INGOs] withdrew.
AGIR focuses on three key programs:
Emergency response,
Equip vulnerable people for socio-economic success, and
Incubate small organizations who can become credible and internationally recognized for their excellence.
AGIR delivers supplies to a medical clinic that got looted during an uprising.
AGIR helps build skills for socio-economic reintegration. This is part of Twa Weza Shinda, which means “We Will Succeed Again.”
AGIR provides training and accompaniment for a variety of young organizations in Goma. Here, AGIR provides health training for UFEDOC staff.
Read about Congo…
Understanding the M23 and RDF Attack by Jason Stearns — January 30, 2025. This is written in French but is easy to translate into English. See the tool in the upper right corner. Please also check Dr. Stearns’ blog on Ebuteli where he discusses events in Congo over the past ten years.
Books
We are not claiming to be experts on DR Congo, nor will this reading list adhere to a single point of view. The history is complex and seen from many different perspectives. The books below provided us with useful insights.
