CIYOTA's campaign for the war victimized children
Tax deductible
Dear Friends,
Thank you for your interest in saving lives. My name is Benson Wereje. This is my wife Sifa Wereje Odette .
I met her in a refugee camp. As young adults, we are both working to educate thousands of children in Uganda. It was a true calling and a privilege because just a few years prior, we were those children. I was separated from my parents, and she lost her family in the war.
Let me explain.
In 1995, at age 16, I witnessed rebels push a bamboo tree from the bottom of a pregnant mother through to the neck; 2 of her children-burnt alive with her while the other ran for their dear life.
That was the last day I lived with my family.
My wife, Odette, lost her mother at age 2 and her father, two weeks after - both killed in cold blood. At age 9, Odette was one of the three survivors in her community where over 20 people were slaughtered by rebels that day.
My wife and I are survivors.
We have survived poverty, war, malaria, even marriage struggles all to be here today to raise our beautiful children together.
I believe there is a sole reason why we survived - because some decided to get involved in our lives, to help. Read this story about how families rescued me from a refugee camp where I was literally starving to death. They saved my life and gave me an education.
I know I have work to do to pay their kindness forward. I have a higher calling on my life, a chance to forever change the world for children like us.
With Odette’s support, my friends and I started CIYOTA in 2005. We started small, by providing scholarships to underprivileged children in refugee camps in Uganda. That initial program scaled into a powerful movement of bricks and mortar school buildings, talented teams of teachers across refugee camps, and in Eastern DRC. Today we are a bright, and hopeful social and educational movement composed of students, parents, teachers and citizens who believe entrepreneurship is a sustainable pathway to peace.
To date, CIYOTA’s replicate model of schools have supported more than 6,000 children in refugee camps in both primary and secondary education and directly supported 84,000 people in the community-at-large with services like healthcare, literacy, feeding, transport, accommodation, safety, and food sustainability.
This year, my wife and I are celebrating 20 years of marriage. And with her support, I am more committed than ever to turn the tide and scale what we learned in Uganda to heal children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
What is happening right now - this moment - in the DRC is unimaginable. I refuse to share images with you but know this, there is a massacre happening in Ituri province. Landowners, many who are parents of small children, are being beheaded by rival tribes for their land. Right now their children are orphaned and alone trying to comprehend what they witnessed and trying desperately to fend for themselves. History from my own childhood threatens to repeat itself and I won’t stand by and watch.
While CIYOTA is supporting multilateral interventions to the violence with our work on the ground to negotiate the peace, I can’t stop thinking about urgent questions. Where will the children left behind sleep tonight? Where will they live? How will they care for themselves? How will they learn? Thrive?
This GoFundMe campaign is to give 20 children in Ituri province a second chance at life. Our organization has already identified host families in our regions of operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the refugee settlement in Uganda who are ready to welcome these children and raise them as their own. We feel that these children’s lives are on the front line just as the pandemic is. These little children, just like us, have witnessed unthinkable violence and experienced the loneliness of being left behind.
They will need loving homes, medication and excellent education to have a chance to heal, break from poverty and earn a living. We have to help them.
Please join me and Odette, on our 20th anniversary, in giving towards our goal of raising $15,000 that will cover annual tuition fees, clothing, feeding, medication, and psychosocial support for the children for 1 year as they settle in.
▪ $25 can buy books for one child
▪ $35 can buy one school uniform
▪ $10 can buy a pair of shoes for a child
▪ $100 can pay all annual school fees
▪ $150 pays all medical care for a year
▪ $400 can feed one child per year
Finally, I want to say this. Someone picked me from the refugee camp, and gave me an education opportunity! This transformed my life and I’ve dedicated every day to helping thousands more. I’ve received a lot of attention and even won the Echoing Green Fellowship that makes the top 1% of social innovators in the world. And even still, I know this. There are thousands of Bensons and Odettes out there who will change the world. I know it. It’s my core belief.
CIYOTA‘s goal is to build a peace movement of one million students, teachers and citizens that centres on social innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership to design solutions to social unrest, bridge gaps between tribes and build sustainable peace. We are an award-winning, people-powered development organization in Uganda and in 2020 will turn our focus to serving youth in the DRC. This mission is urgent.
Your support will change a life. It’s difficult to translate CIYOTA’s motto in English but roughly translates to this. “We build people together.”
Thank you so much in advance.
Sincerely,
Benson Wereje
CIYOTA Website: https://coburwas.org/
Support a child:
News Stories about Our Work:
https://www.ashoka.org/en/fellow/benson-wereje
https://fellows.echoinggreen.org/fellow/benson-wereje/
Thank you for your interest in saving lives. My name is Benson Wereje. This is my wife Sifa Wereje Odette .
I met her in a refugee camp. As young adults, we are both working to educate thousands of children in Uganda. It was a true calling and a privilege because just a few years prior, we were those children. I was separated from my parents, and she lost her family in the war.
Let me explain.
In 1995, at age 16, I witnessed rebels push a bamboo tree from the bottom of a pregnant mother through to the neck; 2 of her children-burnt alive with her while the other ran for their dear life.
That was the last day I lived with my family.
My wife, Odette, lost her mother at age 2 and her father, two weeks after - both killed in cold blood. At age 9, Odette was one of the three survivors in her community where over 20 people were slaughtered by rebels that day.
My wife and I are survivors.
We have survived poverty, war, malaria, even marriage struggles all to be here today to raise our beautiful children together.
I believe there is a sole reason why we survived - because some decided to get involved in our lives, to help. Read this story about how families rescued me from a refugee camp where I was literally starving to death. They saved my life and gave me an education.
I know I have work to do to pay their kindness forward. I have a higher calling on my life, a chance to forever change the world for children like us.
With Odette’s support, my friends and I started CIYOTA in 2005. We started small, by providing scholarships to underprivileged children in refugee camps in Uganda. That initial program scaled into a powerful movement of bricks and mortar school buildings, talented teams of teachers across refugee camps, and in Eastern DRC. Today we are a bright, and hopeful social and educational movement composed of students, parents, teachers and citizens who believe entrepreneurship is a sustainable pathway to peace.
To date, CIYOTA’s replicate model of schools have supported more than 6,000 children in refugee camps in both primary and secondary education and directly supported 84,000 people in the community-at-large with services like healthcare, literacy, feeding, transport, accommodation, safety, and food sustainability.
This year, my wife and I are celebrating 20 years of marriage. And with her support, I am more committed than ever to turn the tide and scale what we learned in Uganda to heal children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
What is happening right now - this moment - in the DRC is unimaginable. I refuse to share images with you but know this, there is a massacre happening in Ituri province. Landowners, many who are parents of small children, are being beheaded by rival tribes for their land. Right now their children are orphaned and alone trying to comprehend what they witnessed and trying desperately to fend for themselves. History from my own childhood threatens to repeat itself and I won’t stand by and watch.
While CIYOTA is supporting multilateral interventions to the violence with our work on the ground to negotiate the peace, I can’t stop thinking about urgent questions. Where will the children left behind sleep tonight? Where will they live? How will they care for themselves? How will they learn? Thrive?
This GoFundMe campaign is to give 20 children in Ituri province a second chance at life. Our organization has already identified host families in our regions of operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the refugee settlement in Uganda who are ready to welcome these children and raise them as their own. We feel that these children’s lives are on the front line just as the pandemic is. These little children, just like us, have witnessed unthinkable violence and experienced the loneliness of being left behind.
They will need loving homes, medication and excellent education to have a chance to heal, break from poverty and earn a living. We have to help them.
Please join me and Odette, on our 20th anniversary, in giving towards our goal of raising $15,000 that will cover annual tuition fees, clothing, feeding, medication, and psychosocial support for the children for 1 year as they settle in.
▪ $25 can buy books for one child
▪ $35 can buy one school uniform
▪ $10 can buy a pair of shoes for a child
▪ $100 can pay all annual school fees
▪ $150 pays all medical care for a year
▪ $400 can feed one child per year
Finally, I want to say this. Someone picked me from the refugee camp, and gave me an education opportunity! This transformed my life and I’ve dedicated every day to helping thousands more. I’ve received a lot of attention and even won the Echoing Green Fellowship that makes the top 1% of social innovators in the world. And even still, I know this. There are thousands of Bensons and Odettes out there who will change the world. I know it. It’s my core belief.
CIYOTA‘s goal is to build a peace movement of one million students, teachers and citizens that centres on social innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership to design solutions to social unrest, bridge gaps between tribes and build sustainable peace. We are an award-winning, people-powered development organization in Uganda and in 2020 will turn our focus to serving youth in the DRC. This mission is urgent.
Your support will change a life. It’s difficult to translate CIYOTA’s motto in English but roughly translates to this. “We build people together.”
Thank you so much in advance.
Sincerely,
Benson Wereje
CIYOTA Website: https://coburwas.org/
Support a child:
News Stories about Our Work:
https://www.ashoka.org/en/fellow/benson-wereje
https://fellows.echoinggreen.org/fellow/benson-wereje/
Organizer
Jeanbat Busisi
Organizer
United States, USA
CIYOTA
Beneficiary