Giving Back to Africa

• Overview
• Current work
• Where we've been

Our work in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Committed to learning about the issues faced by Congolese today, Giving Back to Africa's founders and original board members spent two years educating themselves about the best way to “give back” to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) before implementing any kind of program. By traveling to the DRC, listening and learning from the Congolese, understanding the many problems facing the country, they concluded that the real crisis in Congo was a crisis in leadership.

But this crisis brought up numerous questions that we had to try to answer.

• What kind of leadership could bring stability and productivity to Congo?
• Leadership based on the African ethic of Ubuntu, “giving back.” Reciprocity has always been an important part of Congolese culture, rooted in the belief that “I am because of who we all are.”
• What would this kind of leadership look like?
• The ethic of “giving back” today can best be expressed through models of servant leadership, that lives out the belief that “I am because of who we all are” and “me too, not me first.”
• Who were the future leaders of Congo?
• The less than 1% that ever makes it to the university in the first place.

So, in 2007, we partnered with two respected Congolese institutions. Congo's premier university, the Protestant University of Congo (UPC), shared our vision of “education to build a nation.” The University is an established and legitimate Congolese institution that has outlasted all of the turmoil in Congo since the country gained independence in 1960. Program of Aid and Integration to the Underprivileged (PAID) helps the children they serve become self-sufficient by providing a primary school education for over 250 children and orphans.

Together, we created a three year servant leadership pilot program called Giving Back to Africa's Scholars program.

With the completion of the Scholars Program our initial partnership with PAID has evolved to include undertaking the goal of creating and implementing a curriculum rooted in ideas of servant leadership. With its core emphasis on collaboration and community, this educational program will initially affect the lives of some two hundred and fifty students and their families in Mpasa II. A peri-urban slum designated a refugee settlement by UNHCR in the 1960s; Mpasa II lies about 40 kilometers (twenty four miles) outside of Kinshasa, DRC's capital city of 10 million.