Mama Shujaa Transforming Lives

June 2025

Wow, celebration of the Mama Shujaa impact continues in Congo!

In June I had another birthday. In June, I got a chance to meet Michelle Obama online through the Girls Opportunity Alliance. She spoke about leadership, saying that “when you are a leader you need to take care of yourself as well as the organization, and enjoy the impact and results coming from your work and passion. Be proud of the impact you’re having. Don’t be concerned about what you’re not able to do because all of us can only do what we’re given to do. Be happy and proud about the contribution you are making. It’s significant!”

This month of June, June 30, was also DR Congo’s Independence Day. I was reflecting on my contribution over the last 30 years, where the authorities of the system seem to have kept the colonizing mind of their colonizers; always looking to see who and what they can exploit for their own personal profit. It’s a super-challenging environment to work in. Advocacy is placated. You have to pay authorities in order to engage them in your initiatives, so they don’t really engage; they show up for the paycheck.

I learned early-on that to have the greatest impact, we must work directly with the population, with the people of the communities in the locales where we’re presenced. We must engage the local authorities for protocol’s sake, give them their honor and pay them their stipend, but 99% of our energy, activity, and finances are applied toward direct engagement with women and their daughters, transforming the immediate paradigm and thereby the future for the thousands of adolescent girls and their moms of the communities that our programs engage each year.

As such, we celebrate the confidence and dignity that thousands of adolescent girls now enjoy, having received Mama Shujaa-made washable, reusable Days for Girls feminine hygiene kits, to keep them in school, combatting early and forced marriage, to position them for a future they hold in their own hearts. 

We continue to celebrate the girls whose education we’ve sponsored through high school and university, who are now doctors and lawyers. And we continue to have new high school graduates each year, entering university to follow in the footsteps of these young women that have gone before them.

We celebrate the bountiful harvests of our Food Security program and the dozen Food Cooperatives we’ve formed from the women of the local villages. 

After the extremely challenging times of COVID and the militia conflicts, harvest is truly a time of celebration. We get to see children running around with ears of grilled corn in their mouths,and at dinner time, families leave the table full while there’s still food in their storehouse. 

We’re celebrating over 300 graduates of our Street Business School program who are successful women entrepreneurs and have become confident breadwinners for their households. 

We celebrate the 3,000+ village women who have helped us grow and plant over 300,000 trees across more than 500 hectares of what had become ever-increasing grasslands, encroaching upon the old-growth Itombwe forest. Now the old growth forest is protected while we continue reclaiming the lush habitat of our heartland, where our people have lived for over 400 years.

Please continue to celebrate with us, dear sisters and brothers. It is because of your heart and generosity that we are able to be your Ambassadors of love and transformation among our Congolese sisters and daughters.

We honor you!

Neema