Kimbilio is led by a terrific, 3-person management team. Their leadership sets the tone and the path for all the good work done at Kimbilio. Please meet one member of the leadership team, who has been with Kimbilio since 2011 -- Rodrigue Katina. He's on the right with his leadership colleagues below. Rodrigue is responsible for administration, reintegration and student support at Kimbilio. Back in 2011, he began as a case manager for child identification cases, then as a s

Season's greetings and best wishes for 2026 from Congo Children Trust and Kimbilio. We offer thanks to our supporters on behalf of both organizations as well as Lubumbashi's street children. You make Kimbilio's great work possible year-round, and you and the Kimbilio team made it possible for the children of Kimbilio to celebrate Christmas. Earlier this week, Kimbilio hosted a special meal at the Day Center. This is an annual tradition intended to show the visiting street

Street children near the center of Lubumbashi. The coal is either for selling or for burning for warmth. Radio Okapi is reporting waves of arrests of street children in Lubumbashi. For those unfamiliar with Radio Okapi, it is a joint effort by the United Nations and the Swiss NGO Fondation Hirondelle to provide reliable news reporting across the DR Congo. It has a very large audience. According to Radio Okapi, the agents conducting the arrests claim they are fighting urba

Last week, Kimbilio hosted a visit from Monsieur Mahamadi Oubda, Children's Rights and Security Advisor at the International Bureau of Children's Rights (IBCR). In 2024, Kimbilio entered into a partner agreement with the IBCR. The purpose of the partnership is to protect children through a Children's Consultative Committee (CCC) of Lubumbashi. The mission of this CCC is to give children a voice to be change agents and participate in the decisions that impact them. There ar

There's nothing like the joy of children playing games. Fun and camaraderie are universal needs! The video above is of a game of le Mboko at the Kimbilio's girls' transit home. As you can see, it is a local version of hopscotch. It is the favorite game of the girls residing at Kimbilio. Le Kangé, also known as Zango, is very special. It started as a traditional children's game, and has developed into an official national sport for women in the DR Congo.  Zango means foot

Kimbilio is on track to have a record number of 24 sewing school graduates in 2025! Six cohorts of four women will have the opportunity to increase their earnings and thereby take better care of their children. The numbers show that they'll seize that opportunity - for those who've already completed the training in 2025, the average monthly earnings for each of their new sewing businesses is $79. In the DR Congo, this is an indicator of a highly successful program! We have

Earlier this month, 5 teens graduated from Kimbilio's Young Mums project. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Kimbilio's Young Mums project provides free hairdressing and nails training to teenage mothers who come from the streets to Kimbilio's outreach center and are a good fit for the course. Kimbilio provides lodging to the teens and their children while the teens are following the course. Young Mums gives the teens the opportunity to leave behind a life of sexual exploitation on the streets an

Digital readiness is a critical need for school children. In the DR Congo, it's difficult to accomplish. Based on #UNICEF household...

Congo Children Trust has had a long-term ambition to provide vocational training for former street children, to help us fulfil our...

Different paths suit different children. They have their own passions and dreams. Kimbilio nurtures those dreams and then supports the children as they pursue them. Some children aspire to attend university. Currently, Kimbilio pays the academic fees of 6 students attending the University of Lubumbashi. Today we celebrate one of them: Enock. Kimbilio supported Enock during his earlier school years and then at University. He studied Psychology, and he just defended succes

The results are in...we're delighted to share the news that for the 2024/25 academic year, all 52 of the sixth graders at the Kimbilio...

This post was written by long-time Kimbilio supporter Sarah P., who was part of the Congo Children Trust team that visited Kimbilio this...

Back in Lubumbashi, my former home for five years, after a gap of 2 years, what do I find? The first stand out which is impossible to miss, is the increase in traffic, we spent a significant part of the first few days stuck in traffic jams. Not a very attractive past time you may think, however, it gave us valuable time to catch up with our hosts, the Kimbilio management team, whilst observing all the sights and sounds of this beautiful, bustling, busy city. The increase in t

There's nothing more fulfilling than when a street child is reintegrated with their family. Kimbilio's social workers put in tremendous...

On June 30, 1960, the DR Congo achieved independence from Belgium. The path forward has been tumultuous. Right after independence, the first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated. In 1965, Mobutu Sese Selo seized power in a coup that turned into a dreadful 30 year dictatorship. In the late 1990s, a brutal civil war began. While it officially ended in 2003, achievement of lasting peace and stability remains evasive. This past week, while celebrating 65 years s

At Kimbilio's five facilities, nourishment of children is a crucial aspect of care and community. The main meal at all locations centers on fufu, known locally as bukari. Bukari is made from maize meal (corn flour), which is added to boiling water and stirred constantly to get to a thick, smooth consistency that is stretchier and somewhat firmer than mashed potatoes. It is usually accompanied by chicken or by Thompson fish, which is a type of mackerel. Once per week, rice

Six months ago, 11 year old Dany came off the street to the Kimbilio outreach center for the first time. His father had died. The...

Safety at the Kimbilio Mapendo School has been greatly enhanced by the now complete security wall and guard house, thanks to the...

Access to clean, safe water is challenging across the DR Congo. Lubumbashi is no exception. The city faces a water shortage, with infrastructure deficiencies, climate change and rapid urbanization as contributing factors. Less than one-half of the population has access to water. In 2022, a young resident of the Kalubwe District of Lubumbashi described the difficult water situation where he lives in this short but compelling video. Kalubwe is about 9 kilometers from the Ki

The DR Congo is in the top 10 of the least electrified countries in the world. According to the World Bank, less than 17% of households have access to any electricity at all. Some estimates put the figure at less than 10%. The country's population has gone from 15+ million in the 1960's, to a current estimate of 102+ million, with concurrent worsening of the gap between supply and demand. The potential in hydropower and solar resources is there; the federal infrastructure