In Bweremana, North Kivu, a project backed by the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is teaching people skills they missed out on at school
“On top of my farming work, I get paid US$25 a month for working as a cleaner, but my contract says US$50 a month,” says Desanges Kabuya Ndanzi. “It’s only since I’ve started learning to read that I’ve become aware of this.”
Desanges is a smallholder farmer in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who is overcoming the shame she used to feel at not being able to read, through literacy training.
The 35-year-old, who is raising seven children alone, is six weeks into a course run by the World Food Programme (WFP) and its partners that is empowering her with the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic.
Even with the support of the farmers’ organization that Desanges is part of, taking care of the family’s needs is not easy. On Tuesdays and Fridays Desanges sells bananas and potatoes at the market here in Bweremana, in North Kivu.
Whatever the challenges, she is determined to get all her children through school. Her eldest child, a boy of 19, has just completed secondary school and the next in line, twins, are doing well in their secondary education. Her fourth child is in Year 5 of primary school.
The three younger ones are the children of her late sister and receive some financial support for their schooling from a local church.
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