Cantine Scolaire also known as School Feeding Program

Last week I had the chance to join my team on a 3 day dirt bike trip to visit some of the schools in our program. The program is a partnership between Samaritan's Purse and the World Food Program. The goal of the program is to provide food for 67 schools and over 30,000 students in conflict affected areas. (Remember to click on the pictures to view them larger.)

We headed out on the bikes and met up with a WFP truck full of food. Our goal was to deliver food to  22 schools in the 3 days and also monitor the food consumption, stocks, and records of the schools to make sure the food is being used as intended and getting to the kids. Each school has a committee made up of teachers, students and parents that are in charge of unloading their school's food and also making sure the integrity of the program is kept. 

Schools vary in the different areas but a normal one looks like this. Mud and sticks with a tin roof.  The plus side of this is that its usually pretty cool inside. 

It's a team effort when the food arrives, even the little girls help out. Here they are carrying cooking oil. 

The young men team up to carry a 50 Kilo sack of flour. The food is normally rice and beans, oil, salt, and sometimes flour and cornmeal. 

The Mama's work hard to prepare a meal for a school with over 1000 students! 

Best part of the trip! Getting to see kids that otherwise might not be eating, get a solid meal. The program is not only helping kids stay in school, but at almost every school, attendance numbers are much greater than expected or that were registered at the beginning of the year.

  Here are the guys that make it all happen. Jimmy, Baba, Robert, (Mufalme not pictured.) These guys are out on the road away from there families, at the very least, two weeks per month in the rain, heat, dust, and in some cases very dangerous areas. Thanks for all you do! 

Matthew 18:5

"And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."

First USAIDizi Distributions

About a month ago, Travis and I had the opportunity to join our NFI and Food teams in Nobili (in North Kivu Province) and to help them with some NFI distributions.  The area in which we were intervening is quite isolated, so we had the choice of taking the quickest route there through a forest controlled by ADF-NALU rebels, driving for 2 days or hopping on a WFP helicopter that could get us there in less than 2 hours.  We chose the helicopter.

Travis and our friend, Randy, decided to have a little fun on the chopper ride.

As we prepared logistically for these distributions we ran into a lot of challenges and a lot of corruption, delaying them by about a month.  Our teams and the beneficiaries were very discouraged and anxious to begin the distributions, so it was really exciting to share in the joy of the first ones.  Here are a few pictures of the distribution process.

As Quality Assurance Manager, Travis did spot checks at the warehouse and the distribution sites to make sure NFI kits contained everything they were supposed to, proper protocol was being followed and documentation was in order.  Here he is checking the contents of a couple random kits.

The NFI kits were composed of hygiene kits, kitchen kits, clothes, mosquito nets, jerry cans, basins, blankets and much more.  

Our teams are so good at their jobs! They had a really impressive system that made distributing to about 600 families/day flow so smoothly and quickly.

The ease with which the women carried their loads was very impressive.  They put the men to shame.

Some of the cute spectators.

                           

Happy beneficiaries walking home with their kits.

 We loved being able to work together!

The amazing SP DRC USAIDizi NFI and Food teams!

At the end of this intervention our teams distributed NFI kits to 3,113 households and food to 3,096 households.  Our food team will be returning to distribute food to the same households in March and April.

This coming week our teams will begin distributions to 4,000 households in and around Eringeti, North Kivu.  The majority of these families fled the horrific massacres taking place in Beni Territory the end of last year and into this year.  See article below.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/12/many-dead-dr-congo-massacre-201412785151582543.html

Pray for our teams as they are anticipating these distributions will be challenging.  Although in need of help, the beneficiaries have shown themselves to be extremely difficult to work with.  Furthermore, there is continued rebel activity nearby and the UN just recently positioned soldiers in the area for a possible offensive.

*Remember you can click on the pictures to view them larger .*

Merry Christmas from Niger!

Merry Christmas to you all!  We are spending Christmas in Niger with Jordanne's parents and younger brother, where they serve with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. We have been in the DRC for about 3 months and this is our first R&R. We are very happy to have had this time in Niger with family.

While here we had the opportunity to go to Park W. We took a boat down the Niger River and saw a family of 12 elephants. We were able to get very close to them and decided to leave once they started flapping there ears. A tell tale sign that an elephant is not happy.

We went out on the last night and ran into this girl! A very rare sight for Park W. An extremely intense experience for Travis as he was sitting on the roof of the car with a spot light and the park guide. We got  about 15 feet from the lion and it started to walk towards us and followed us for a bit before laying down. 

No snow but it has been a great African Christmas!  Wishing you all happy holidays, lots of rest, and good times with family!  May you experience the joy of knowing our Savior is with us!! 

A brief overview of our work

Sorry for the delay in posting, we will try to do a better job with this. Above is  map of DRC. Our programs focus on helping people in Province Orientale and North Kivu. We have bases in Bunia, Beni, Faradje, Aba, and Getty. As you can see the work is pretty spread out.

This is our World Food Program School feeding team. As some of you know I was hired on as a procurement manager. This changed right before I left to come out and now I am managing this school feeding program along with doing some other work with the program that Jordanne is working on. This change has been a challenge for me as I have not done work with food programing before but, I finally feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it. The short explanation of the program is that it is designed to feed over 30,000 kids lunch in 67 schools. This involves frequent visits to all 67 schools buy our field staff to record data distribute food for the month and ensure that everything is going smoothly and the kids are getting the food. Most of the schools are in the Orientale province along two axis, Bunia to Komanda and Bunia to Boga. Some of the schools are in insecure areas.

Meet the humongous USAIDizi team!  We really do have a large program team, but this picture also includes a lot of the support staff like the finance, logistics and base management teams.  "Usaidizi" means "assistance" in Swahili and it is a perfect name for our program which aims to assist over 106,000 people in one year.  Our program seems to be getting off to a slow start, but we are looking forward to finally doing our first large Food and NFI distribution in early January.  This distribution is going to take place in the Kamango/Nobili area, which is in North Kivu and right on the border with Uganda.  We will be assisting 3,180 households, most of whom have returned to the DRC with nothing after fleeing into Uganda due to rebel activity.  Please keep these beneficiaries and our Food and NFI teams in your prayers as there have been recent rumors that the rebel group, ADF-Nalu, is moving in that direction.  Our Agriculture/Food Security teams have been busy doing Tool Fairs, as well as agriculture, nutritional gardens and goat raising trainings for beneficiaries who have managed to settle but are still vulnerable.  Our Ag team in Beni especially needs your prayers, with weekly massacres taking place on the outskirts of Beni.  Here is an article explaining more about that conflict.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-3015177 7

Thank you for your love, encouragement and prayers!  Every day we realize even more just how essential your prayers are to our work here in the DRC!

Much love,

Travis and Jordanne

Welcome to our Blog/newsletter

Hello all and welcome to our blog. We have been in the DR Congo for 6 weeks now ! Sorry that we have not gotten any word out as we have been busy with work and getting situated. We originally planed on a newsletter and that doesn't seem to be the best option for us at the moment so, hopefully this blog can be a good replacement. Feel free to follow us. Above is one of the many planes we flew in on. We flew from North Carolina to Detroit to Amsterdam to Rwanda to Uganda and then finally to the DR Congo on a small plane like the one above. Thank you all for covering our travel in your prayers.

This is our house in the town of Bunia. We are currently making it homier. It is a lot nicer than we expected, but still has some challenges. I should note that it is surrounded by eight foot walls with razor wire on the top. Sometimes we feel like were camping inside as there is some plumbing and electrical issues. Our motto has become "keep your headlamp close". Overall, we are very grateful for it and it sure beats a tent !

This is us on a short hiking trip we took. Behind us is lake Albert and on the other side of the lake is Uganda. That is all for now. We just wanted to get some type of communication out there to all of you who are thinking about us and praying for us. In the next post we will try to explain more about the work we are doing in the DR Congo and so everyone is clear from now on when we write DRC that stands for Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Thank you all,
                                                                                                      Travis & Jordanne