From Sr. Mariette Macozi, Kinshasa, DR Congo
Since 2001, our Kinshasa community has collaborated with the SVD Fathers (Divine Word) in the mission of supporting children living in the street. This bond was forged thanks to three of our sisters who preceded us in the work of Reclassification and Protection of Street Children (ORPER in acronym).
Sister Anosiata Keneema and I continue the apostolate initiated by our Sisters in this structure which has been in existence for more than 43 years. We are welcomed and fully integrated in this. Arriving in Kinshasa in 2021, I was sent to work at ORPER where I easily integrated into social work serving street children. At the local level, collaboration takes place as a work team where each educator makes their contribution to the success of the mission which we carry out together.
The center manager, who is like the eye of the management committee, coordinates the work and ensures that all activities supporting the children take place harmoniously. Over time, I had the opportunity to take on the role of manager in two centers; this experience put me in contact with many people for the well-being of children.
Apart from the education team, I have had to meet many people of good will who support us with multifaceted donations which allow our children to lead a more decent life in the centers where we accommodate them. Since 2022, I have been in charge of the human resources department of ORPER. This function – managing around sixty people dedicated to serving children in street situations on a daily basis – allows me to interact with people of diverse temperaments, in view of ensuring the proper functioning and monitoring of activities.
It’s a task that requires listening to both staff and children at all times, to seek together what is best in a given situation, for the proper functioning of the whole.
Nationally, we collaborate with several state authorities to prevent the phenomenon of street children. We do this through advocacy, to ensure ever more protection for this layer of vulnerable and neglected children in our society.
On an international scale, we benefit from the financial support of several organizations which are involved in different ways in our educational work with children as well as with ORPER educational staff. It is in this context, with the support of the Association “Coeur Soleil/ Pessac – France”, that we coordinated the writing of a work on the transmission of the profession of social worker at ORPER.
It was an exciting exercise in collaboration with all educators wishing to participate in the completion of this common work. Initially, many did not believe that we would achieve anything significant. However, with time and everyone’s diligence, our work began to take shape. It was for us a source of encouragement and dynamism, allowing us to stimulate all those who were willing to provide the articles and/or contributions necessary to move forward in our writing. This required a certain rigor which allowed us not to get tired of asking everyone to provide us with material within the allotted deadline, but also to show understanding when the deadline for submitting texts was not respected.
Patience allowed us to continue to hope for everyone’s contribution, even when it seemed slow in arriving. Today I am happy to have contributed to the “birth” of this work, the fruit of experience accumulated by ORPER in forty-three years of existence which we celebrated on February 12, 2024.
The fruit of this work results from the knowledge and know-how taught during numerous professional training sessions for ORPER staff, sessions provided by the “Coeur Soleil” Association. This work also demonstrates a strong commitment, an international solidarity between the ORPER and the “Coeur Soleil” Association, in a partnership contract signed in November 1994 in matters of health and education.
The official release of our book “Bare feet, bare hands” gave us the hope that its content will be a source of inspiration and challenge for our readers, so that the concern for street children prevails as the concern of all children, their well-being and protection.
