In January 2023, DAI received support from Rotary International to implement functional and awareness-raising literacy activities for 900 women and girls in the territories of Walungu and Kabare, South Kivu Province in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo with a view to improving their socio-economic living conditions.
In the implementation of activities, DAI formalized a collaboration with 4 Community Based Organizations (CBO)
Target group:
The beneficiaries of the project are 900 vulnerable women and girls divided into 30 groups supervised by the CBOs.
Total Budget:
The validated budget amounts to 30844$. It is divided into several sections, namely:
- Training costs
- Training materials, supplies and equipment
- Operational costs for project implementation
- Monitoring, evaluation and report writing costs
- Project staff costs
- Administrative costs for project management
During the implementation of the project, several monitoring and evaluation missions were carried out by AID Congo agents throughout the project to see the degree of achievement of results achieved through contributions to the project indicators and known the support of Rotary club Bukavu Umoja.
It is noted that functional literacy using the ALEF method for vulnerable and illiterate groups is still recommended for four phases of eight (8) months each. It is only at the end of these thirty-two months that learners are able to acquire complete knowledge of reading, writing and calculation.
The current project was funded for functional and empowering literacy for a period of 8 months, a single phase. Thus, the results which will be presented in the following lines will take into account the fact of progressive learning.
Well beyond the figures making it possible to quantitatively assess progress on the indicators, the empowering literacy action aimed to improve the social cohesion of beneficiaries within their groups. Thus, it was associated with the regular collection of data, during field trips, participatory evaluation, carried out with the people participating in the action and the operators responsible for the actions. This is the approach favored by social cohesion policies, with the aim of assessing the impact of these policies on the well-being of the “beneficiaries”
Piter Bowman
- The majority of learners in each of the OBCs already know how to read and write short sentences;
- Thanks to functional literacy training, some learners are more capable and already know how to read their savings books and also know how to record their contributions to the VSLA and MUSO.
- In some OBCs, some centers have integrated men in view of the need for literacy.
- The project sparked this need for functional literacy within communities as some learning centers registered learners on a waiting list; Other OBCs exceeded the number of learners per class (30) planned by the project given the enthusiasm of the demand was very high. This is the case, for example, of the OBC AMACM where the Njove center already has 6 classes which do not depend on the project and whose trainers are supported by the learners themselves because the needs were strongly felt in the community;
- Some members have become autonomous, they occupy positions of responsibility in the community (Church, sector, AVEC, MUSO,). They have great hope for a promising future.
