Living through almost fictitious challenges
made him versatile and what he calls a
‘change maker without limits’. Baraka
maintains that “if you don’t have a job and
can’t get one, then create one. Unemployed
youngsters want to be hired. My friends
who are graduates and unemployed, are
home; sitting and consuming their parents’
money. They don’t have jobs and they don’t
bother to think about creating jobs.”
“In registering our organization, we
were charged more than double the
amount and given more requirements.
As much as it was an organization to
help create jobs, officials would say
‘unemployment is not our concern, just
pay the money as told or leave’. This was
shocking!” he adds.
“I stepped up and created an organization,
Centre d'entraide et de Fraternite pour le
Développement Integral, CEFRADI, in
2014 with a mission to create jobs for unemployed youngsters. The funny thing is
that when I approached my friends who
are unemployed with this idea, the first
thing they would ask is ‘how much money
will you pay me per month?” He chuckles.
“if you don’t have a job
and can’t get one, then
create one.”
After CEFRADI was registered, their first
project was building a market in Rutshuru
territory, Rugari village in Eastern DRC.
“The war between the government and
M23 rebel forces was recently over in this
village, leaving people economically devastated. They needed quick recovery,” says
Baraka. On top of that, the war resulted in
discrimination between the Congolese and
Rwandese. Building a public market, he
thought, would bring people of all ethnicities together and hence solve these issues.
I hearken attentively to his words, trying to
get the significance of what he’s telling me.
Having not yet reached closure, Baraka
continues, “young adults in DRC only want
the present interest; they want to get success
at their time, today. I explained that it
could take some time to benefit from the
organization, even one year or two. ‘That is
a waste of my time, I don’t have time for
such initiatives,’ was a common response I
got. But then I wondered, how can someone
who is just staying at his or her parent’s
Evidently, it was not a small project to
house, doing nothing productive, say they
take on. “We were broke. And we needed
don’t have time?”
36,000 US dollars to run this project,” he
confesses. But you applied for funding,
Was it easy setting up your organization?
right? “Nope,” he replies, “many associa“Not at all. The government is so corrupt
tions in Congo are created in order to get
and there is nowhere to report corruption
funding. When funds come in, they divide
cases.” So they had to fight an uphill
among themselves and disappear. So we
battle.
were denied funding. The requirement was
to run 5 projects in order to get approval,”
he adds.