Progress to Date

Mama Wimbi is a development project based in The Democratic Republic of Congo, in the heart of Africa.

The Mama Wimbi Project was launched last year with a commitment to guarantee a year of education for 33 primary children and to establish a sustainable development model which would ensure that at least some of those children received ongoing education as a result.

We received seed funding from The Rotary Club of Cooma, District 9710,

The Rotary Club of Hall, The Rotary Club of Belconnen and several individuals.

We bought three sewing machines and a lot of fabric, negotiated use of a workspace, trained the team, paid the first year of school fees and started work.

The Mama Wimbi Team have been working since June 2018 and have produced 430 buntings, enough to get the first 19 of the 44 primary children back to school next September.

The number of primary children has grown because we needed skilled machinists who would could teach the others, without a budget to pay them for their service. Nsmire, Sangani, Masoka and Via joined the team to instruct and lead the others, so it is only fair that their children should be included.

123 buntings have been sold and we are hoping to sell another 150 in our International Women’s Day promotion to Rotary Clubs in the 9710 District.

So, Phase One (33 children educated until June 2019) is fully achieved! Congratulations to all concerned!!

Phase Two (44 children educated until June 2020) is nearly half way achieved, with several months left to go before fees are due in September.

Since the sewing team is now working 4 hours a day Monday to Thursday and producing 80 buntings per week, it can probably achieve even more.

Of course the parents don’t want their children to have to end their education at primary school, so Phase Three will involve sending the older children of the team to middle school.

Secondary schooling is more expensive, so to earn the money to educate our 40 older brothers and sisters of the little ones, we will need to sew and sell another 778 buntings before school starts next September.

Perhaps we will not quite achieve this third goal, but we will do our best and certainly we will enable some of the youngsters to have the school education that we were all able to take for granted.