Support Art & Music for Youth in the D.R. Congo

Elsa Westreicher is organizing this fundraiser.

Donation protected

✨ Help Us Build Creative Spaces, Inspire Talent & Empower the Next Generation ✨

✨ Hello dear friends, supporters, and lovers of art and music

We are Mwano Studio, a grassroots, non-profit cultural organization based in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Our mission is simple but powerful:

To use art and music as tools for expression, education, healing, and unity, especially among young people in the DRC.

✊ Why This Matters:

In communities across Congo, young people — who make up half of the population in Kinshasa — face enormous challenges: Poverty, unemployment, trauma, lack of access to education, and very few platforms for creativity.

But there is a long history of art and music as healing practices in the DR Congo, and we believe that they are powerful tools to imagine futures and to come together to make worlds.

Unfortunately, many talented youth have little options. Instruments and mentors are rare, so are possibilities to be heard and seen.

That’s where we come in.

✨ What We're Doing:

Mwano Studio is working to:

Offer free creative workshops – painting, drawing, photography, music production, poetry, and dance
Set up a community recording studio for young musicians
Organize exhibitions, performances, and art projects to bring visibility to local talent
Allow space for intergenerational learning
Host open mic nights & cultural events to promote community, diversity, and youth expression
Raise awareness through art on key issues: ecology, community, decolonization, equality, etc.

✊ Where Your Help Goes:

We need to raise a minimum of 5.000 € to:

Add to our music instruments & sound equipment
️ Purchase art supplies & materials for workshops
Improve our modest space in Kinshasa into a vibrant creative centre (first priority being more reliable electricity, i.e. adding to our solar panels)
Plant 200 trees on our agricultural space and start a medicinal garden
Pay local artist-educators and facilitators
Promote youth art & music events to reach the community
Help us cover the costs to register as an NGO

✨ Why now?

We’re at a pivotal moment.

In the last five years Nada and Elsa have built the foundations of Mwano Studio with dedication, creativity, and a mix of self- and co-financing. We’ve grown slowly but with intention — creating a space for collaboration, care, and imagination.

But now, with the world facing growing uncertainty — and the challenges in the DRC becoming even more pressing — we feel it’s time for a leap of faith. To keep going, we want to fully register as an NGO in order to grow sustainably. For this, we need your support.

We’ve tilled the soil, planted seeds, and nurtured a vision. Now, we’re ready to water those seeds, help them grow, and share the harvest.

And to stay with the metaphor: the perfect planting season starts in two weeks. Our goal to plant 200 trees in the coming months makes this a perfect time to help something meaningful take root.

✊ Prefer to support by buying an artwork?

If you’d rather contribute through art, we’d love that!

We have a range of original works available, and we’d be happy to discuss what might resonate with you. At least 25% of each artwork’s price will go directly toward one of the goals mentioned above — making your support both a personal and collective contribution.