Voices from DR Congo: Enabling Affected Communities to Survive and Thrive

Enabling Affected Communities to Survive and Thrive (EAST) Consortium is a 28-month, £28 million GBP nutrition and livelihood programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) and managed by a consortium of five international and national humanitarian NGOs, led by Concern Worldwide. 

As part of a coordinated response, EAST works with individuals and communities affected by conflict in the east of DR Congo to address urgent protection needs and strengthen their resilience in face of continuing violence and uncertainty of vulnerable populations living in conflict-affected areas in the east of DR Congo. 

The EAST Consortium implements an integrated package of livelihoods, protection and nutrition activities in 11 health zones across 4 provinces in Eastern DR Congo, aiming to support over 430,000 individuals including 65,000 people living with disabilities.

4 individuals supported by the Consortium share their stories. 

Alice, a pregnant 27-year-old mother of five, fled to the town of Beni with three of her children when violence erupted in her home village in 2022. The stress of fleeing caused her to suffer a miscarriage. In their hurry to leave, the family brought neither belongings nor money, making the search for food a daily struggle. Arriving in Beni, Alice and her children were initially housed by a local host family. After some time, they relocated to an informal settlement where displaced people have found shelter in abandoned buildings:

“Life was very hard in the displacement settlement. Finding food was a big problem. We had to search for people for whom we could do laundry to get some money. We found people who had farms and offered to go and collect cassava leaves and cook them for the family.”

Back home, Alice had benefited from vocational training in sewing provided by an INGO.  In Beni she continued to practice dressmaking in her neighbour’s tailor shop, where she was given use of a second sewing machine and received a small daily wage for her work. Alice was determined to grow her own business and, with the help of an INGO, purchased her own sewing machine and saved enough money to rent a space to open her own tailors. There, she decided to train other women: “I came up with the idea when I realised that at one stage I had also learned.’’

As part of the FCDO-funded EAST programme, Concern Worldwide has established 40 Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA) in Beni, including one in Alice’s neighbourhood. Alice was selected by Concern to become a member of the VSLA as part of a wider livelihoods programme that targets people living in extreme poverty with a lack of basic assets or very low return on assets. Alice’s VSLA has been running since October 2024 and now has 22 members who meet weekly to buy shares in their group, continually investing a portion of their income and pooling it with their friends and neighbours to create a larger collective fund. Members can take out loans as needed, using their savings as collateral, rather than selling major assets or cutting down on household necessities.

Ana, a 38-year-old mother of seven, grew up in a village in Beni territory with her five siblings and farmer parents. Although life in the village was generally peaceful, women and girls always felt the threat of violence:

“The earliest time I remember hearing about violence there is around 2005. At that time, the streams from where we gathered water were far from home and women had to travel long distances to fetch water. Sometimes, men would rape the women. Even though the women would scream, nobody could hear them because they were very far away.”

In June 2024, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), one of over 160 rebel armed groups active in the country, entered Ana’s village. Ana became separated from her children. In the chaos, she ended up in an area controlled by the ADF. She explains: “The way they were catching people is that they pretended to be protecting us from another armed group. They locked us inside a barn that was near our place and gathered many people there.”

With no safe place left to go, Ana and her fellow villagers suffered horrific abuse at the hands of these armed men: “After some time, we realised that they were not really protecting us. We managed to escape, but as we fled, they chased us until they caught us, and they brought us near a lake. There, they raped us. And after raping people, they tied people up and threw them into the lake. They had threatened to throw us into the lake because we had escaped. When they were about to throw us, me included, into the lake, they heard a whistle which made them leave.”

After surviving the attack, Ana decided to leave on foot for the city of Beni. Due to lack of medical care following her sexual assault, Ana arrived in the town in poor health. Initially, she was worried about seeking help: “When we fled, we didn't carry money with us because there was no time to go and get it. And, when I reached here with no money, I was telling myself, there's no way I could go to a health centre because they will ask for money. And with our cases of rape, it is so difficult to open up to somebody, and it's hard to get treatment.”

Encouraged by her neighbour, Ana visited a Concern supported health facility: 

“When I reached here, fortunately, I met Concern staff, and I received appropriate treatment. [The staff member] introduced me to the Concern programme. She gave me medicine, and she told me that the medicine is free of charge - Concern is the one paying, and Concern has been helping other people in the same situation.”

Felix, a 43-year-old father of four, currently lives in Beni with his 12-year-son. When fleeing conflict in their village, they became separated from the rest of their family: “My wife and I got separated. Because of the war, we fled and went our separate ways. I have four children, but only one of them is with me, he is 12 years old. We used to live in a village in the territory of Beni. The main farming we used to do was cocoa and plantains. Life was good then because I was able to go to Oicha [a main town] with four bikes carrying plantains. We even used to load trucks with plantains to sell them there.

The violence in his village reached its peak four months ago when Felix survived a deadly attack prompting him to relocate to Beni: “At first, even though we had fled there, we used to go back and forth to the village to farm our land. But, four months ago, we decided to leave for good because everything was burnt down. The group that I used to go farming with, everybody got killed, and I was the lone survivor. I was with them going to buy plantains, but I got a flat tyre. I told them to continue and that I would fix my tyre at the garage. Some time later, people told me that all the motorbikes that were ahead of me were burnt, and all the riders were killed.  Even the buyers who used to purchase our harvest, their motorbikes were burnt in the village. Everything was burnt, so there was no life remaining there. And so, I fled.”

Francine, 48, fled her home after the Allied Defence Forces (ADF) attacked her village . She arrived in Beni four years ago and has struggled to find a way to make a living in the town: “In Komanda, life was very good because I could get anything from my farm. I used to farm. But here, I don't have anything. I fled with nothing. At home, I had started growing cocoa, and I also used to cultivate plantain and rice. But when I fled, I left with nothing. My life is a struggle because finding food to eat and money to pay rent is very difficult.”

A grandmother of five, Francine is the primary carer for her granddaughter Christivie, who struggles with sitting independently, walking and talking. When Francine first took in Christivie, the child was severely malnourished, weighing only four kilos. At the local health centre, Christivie was referred by Première Urgence International (PUI) to the general hospital, which is also supported by PUI, for malnutrition treatment: “Today, my child weighs nine kilos. I'm just grateful.”