Kasime and her two young children sitting in the doorway of her simple mud-brick house
Imagine: You hear men at the door one night. They drag your husband outside. As you watch through the window, they brutally kill him in cold blood. Then they move on to other houses.
Your nightmare has just begun. Leaving nearly everything but your baby behind, you flee in tears while you have the chance.
I know this is a brutal story. But it was the stark reality for Kasime, an adolescent mother from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who was forced to flee her home last year amid rising violence.
The flip side to this story? With your help, there is hope for Kasime and hundreds of other DRC refugees like her. Hope for healing, for learning new skills, for building a new life with renewed health and outlook.
Kasime is a 17-year-old mother of two. In September of 2022, she fled the violent turmoil raging in the DRC after Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militants came to her home.
“They. . . ordered my husband out, tied his hands, and asked him to say his last prayers before shooting him several times. . . He died instantly. I was watching through the window. I couldn’t do anything to save him. The next day, I heard that many young men in the neighborhood were taken and murdered.”
Terrified and heartbroken, Kasime immediately decided to leave DRC. She made the dangerous journey to Uganda on foot with her infant child. Eventually, they arrived at Imvepi Refugee Settlement.
At Imvepi, Kasime was given a small plot of land. What little money she had with her went toward building a hut. Already pregnant when she fled DRC, she delivered her second child at Imvepi in February 2023. “It was then that I fully realized life was not going to be what I expected,” she lamented.
Kasime’s despair was so great that at one point, she considered abandoning her children. But then she joined ChildVoice. She began to see that not all hope was lost. She started receiving regular counseling. But challenges remain. Water pours through the roof of her dilapidated hut whenever it rains. She constantly worries about her children’s health and safety.
Kasime needs help to fix her modest home. She wants to participate in agriculture training so she can grow nutritious grain and vegetables for her children. She is already participating in some activities, such as bar soap making.
“I would like to learn skills like tailoring,” Kasime said. “Maybe in the future I will buy my own sewing machine and start my own business.”
The Christmas season can fill our lives with joy as we celebrate with friends and family. What greater joy is there than to know you have reached out and given from your heart to help a teenage mother like Kasime receive the gift of hope? Amid the violent unrest shaking our world today, refuse to forget the innocents who suffer. Instead, choose mercy, love, action – and purpose.
Thirty years of constant war has displaced over 6 million Congolese people. Read our Situation Report.