FN’s Civil Society Conference  2024 

Congo's Children participated in the UN Civil Society Conference 2024UNCSC on May 9-10 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The UNCSC has been held 69 times since 1946, where NGOs from around the world meet. The conference was special this year as it was the first to be held in Africa. Consequently, 70% of the participants were from Africa. There were 2000 delegates present, and 2000 more participated in various online events at the conference or in one of the associated events elsewhere in Nairobi.

For us, Gina and Kim, who could represent Congo's Children with the support of the Association for World Education (AWE), participating in the UN conference was a fantastic and educational experience. We are a small, newly established Danish NGO, and it is therefore a great vote of confidence from the UN committee to not only grant us access passes to the conference but also to select us to organize one of the 44 workshops at the conference. There were 302 applications for this, and half of them were pre-selected for projects concerning Kenya. So, out of 22 possible workshops, we were allowed to host one. Thanks to AWE for the great support.

The Democratic Republic of Congo faces enormous challenges. There is a long-standing war in the eastern part of the country. The presentation of our work in Kinshasa helped to highlight another major challenge of DR Congo, namely the many street children. Our workshop was very well received, and we had an energetic debate about the issues surrounding street children and orphans in DR Congo. Topics included how to prevent children in orphanages from being isolated from the outside world and abused; how criminal networks use street children as a resource, training them to become the world's most effective criminals from a young age; the challenges of reuniting street children with their biological families; and experiences with using foster families.

The workshop connected us with other NGOs working with street children both in and outside of DR Congo. We also made contact with NGOs that have other projects in DR Congo. We had the opportunity to speak with representatives from various parts of the UN system, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Global Focus, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights. They were all very positive, motivated, and encouraged by our engagement and the work VIGALEX and Congo's Children are doing to support street children in Kinshasa. We have arranged to meet with many of them in Denmark to discuss potential collaboration opportunities. We have also agreed to collaborate with several Congolese NGOs. The many opportunities for collaboration provided courage and motivation to continue helping the most vulnerable children in DR Congo – for us, but seemingly just as much for the other NGOs that met and learned about our work. Last but not least, we received many concrete good advice and ideas, which we will present to the board when we return home.

After the workshop, we discussed various strategies with other NGOs. For example, we learned about the Toto Church project in Uganda. The church had purchased a very large piece of land outside Kampala, where there was nothing but nature nearby. They built a town there with a church, residential houses, a grocery store, and more. They offered orphaned children the opportunity to move to the town. The same offer was extended to single women whose lives had been devastated by the war, such as those who had lost their children and families. Each woman was paired with 3-4 children. This small family was given a house and a small piece of land to cultivate and live off. If they needed help, such as a father figure to resolve family conflicts with his authority, they used the pastor. In this way, the Toto Church provided many orphaned children with a "normal" family, and many women regained a meaningful life after losing everything.

Another Kenyan NGO works on reuniting orphaned children with single elderly people. If you don't have family to help you when you grow old, you become neglected and left to fend for yourself. These elderly people were given a meaningful old age by helping to raise the next generation, and the orphaned children received a sense of family.

The conference concluded on May 10 with speeches by Kenya's President William Ruto and UN Secretary-General António Guterres.