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The Indiana Daily Student

Giving Back to Africa gala fundraises for empowerment

Giving Back to Africa’s biggest fundraising event of the year took place Sunday at the Clubhouse at the Fields. “Congo: Continue the Story in the Garden” attracted more than 200 guests and raised more than $25,000 for the nonprofit organization’s work with schools in the Democratic Republic 
of Congo.

The annual gala, now in its fourth year, is a chance for the organization to raise money while sharing the year’s progress with old and new donors, educating them about the programs GBA runs and looking ahead to next year’s work. There was a silent auction, an African market, food, drinks, African music and a program that consisted of short videos and speakers.

“It’s a chance to show what we’ve accomplished,” said Dena Hawes, the executive director of GBA since 2013. She said the organization has grown since she joined. In less than two years, annual revenue has increased from about $90,000 to more than $147,000.

The financial increases have made it possible for GBA to improve its programming at the organization’s first partner school, Collège des Saviors, or “school of knowledges” in French. It sits in a suburb called Mpasa II, which is outside of Kinshasa, the capital city of the DRC. More money has also made expansion to a second and eventually a third school 
possible.

Jim Calli, who co-founded GBA with his wife Anne Marie Thomson, said GBA truly collaborates with Congolese teachers and students.

“We don’t do for, we do with,” he said. “Instead of going in and saying what don’t you have, we go in and say what do you have that we can develop?”

Hawes said GBA doesn’t attempt to control the school, but it does want to help teachers and students help themselves.

“We don’t dictate anything,” she said. “We work with the teachers and students to plan curriculum every year. Our whole program is really about helping them to be civic leaders.”

Calli said GBA’s approach is different and the organization intends to be involved in the Congo for the long run.

“We call it deep, not broad,” he said. “We don’t do short-term infrastructure projects.”

Hawes said fifth through 10th-grade students are involved in GBA’s educational programming at Collège des Saviors. GBA has been involved there for four years. The organization’s focus on sustainability education was the inspiration for the garden theme of this year’s gala.

“We are in the second year of a three-year sustainability curriculum,” she said. Students have learned about agriculture and soil, farming, clean water, waste management, composting and nutrition. The curriculum will culminate in the planning and building of a garden, she said.

The Rotary Club of Bloomington and the Rotary Club Gombe in Kinshasa worked together to raise money for the school’s infrastructure as well as a fence that will go around the garden.

Hawes said the programming is unprecedented in the Congo.

“They are learning leadership, civic engagement, problem solving and critical thinking,” she said. “This is not what children typically learn in Congolese schools.”

Calli said GBA is different from other organizations.

“We don’t show starving kids,” he said. “We show bright, smart kids.”

That’s what Maria Brown, vice chair of GBA’s board, said she saw when she looks at the children at Collège des Saviors. Her family adopted a now four-year-old boy from the Congo when he was a baby. Brown said the country will always be part of her family, and that fact inspires her to work with GBA.

“We see GBA as a way to help and come alongside kids who are vulnerable and living in difficult circumstances,” she said. “We want to give them opportunities.”

Brown, Calli and Hawes all said GBA’s slow, deliberate work and focus on 
empowerment sets it apart.

“We’re not the white saviors. We’re not the people that have the answers,” Brown said. “We can just walk alongside them and say maybe we can work together.”

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