Brief report on the online Fundraising Trainings of CAPRIDIS Staff members in Uvira DRCongo
Report on the two Days Training of CAPRIDIS staff members about online fundraising opportunities to respond to the community problems in Uvira, South Kivu, the Democratic Republic of Congo, facilitated by Kulihoshi Musikami Pecos, the Coordinator of COJESKI North Kivu.
Alex Buchunga Bigera, the CAPRIDIS Coordinator in Uvira during his opening remarks
CAPRIDIS staff members are composed of refugees and members of the host communities among them IDPs and survivors of the flooding in Uvira.
CAPRIDIS is a Consortium of various local initiatives focusing on issues around forced migrants, and at this particular moment they are confronted by the number of Internally Displaced Persons, Refugees and flood victims in Uvira. Because of the war, all relief aid organizations fled to neighboring countries especially Burundi, leaving the victims with no aid, languishing in their communities. We do not have yet the statistics of how many have died of hunger, diseases, sickness, and dire conditions in which they are living. At this point only the African Solidarity has tried to play its role in which people share things together, but for how long.
It was on this ground that despite this ugly reality, we have to capitalized the existing local and community opportunities, in these communities there are initiatives which are playing a great role but they lack financial support on order to amplify their work and in the process they efforts seem to appear unnoticed, especially that they work outside the Cameras, here there is no media to broadcast what they are doing yet in actual sense they are the hope of the entire community.
After a brief exchange between Kulihoshi Musikami Pecos, the Coordinator of COJESKI North Kivu and Alex Buchunga Bigera the Coordinator of CAPRIDIS in Uvira South Kivu, Pecos then carried out a field visit and was amazed by the great work being done by CAPRIDIS, but also was confronted by the challenges they are facing in terms of financial problems. In order to address this Pecos proposed to train them on online fundraising opportunities so that they can get involved and help their communities.
Two sessions held
On Friday March 7th, 2025 Pecos organized the very first session which started at 9am and ended at 1pm. The participants were introduced to various online fundraising opportunities and how they raise money through social media, how to communicate about their activities and to engage people to donate to their causes.
The second session was held on Wednesday March 12th, 2025 and focused on opportunities offered by GlobalGiving and how to engage and partner with GlobalGiving. After the training the participants also joined the Zoom meeting which was organized by GlobalGiving on how to fundraise.
Three online platforms were introduced to CAPRIDIS staff members. The first was GoFundMe, REFRAME and GlobalGiving. The staff members were also introduced to use Social Media for their activities and the following social media were identified: Facebook, Twitter, InstaGram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and emails.
A total number of 13 staff members of CAPRIDIS were trained and strongly got involved in the two days trainings. During these sessions CAPRIDIS members have been also invited to join a briefing meeting on the situation of refugees in DRC which is being organized by COHERE and other donors who are interested to learn more about refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The meeting is scheduled to take place on Monday March 17th, 2025 through Google Meeting.
At COJESKI North Kivu, we are so happy that we have managed to training our colleagues at CAPRIDIS, and have managed to link them to GlobalGiving, REFRAME and GoFundMe. This has also helped us to get in contact with refugees in South Kivu, to plan how to help refugees to get organized more and to promote refugee initiatives. During this one week of various activities CAPRIDIS started the process to join the three online opportunities.
The next step will be to train also local organizations in Tanganyika Province and in Katanga in order to cover the whole eastern DRCongo and this will help us to fully address refugee issues. We still make it clear that solving refugee issues in DRC is part of the solutions to the wars in this country which are focused around refugee management issues.
Thanks
Kulihoshi Musikami Pecos
