“Collaboration and unity among grassroots women’s organisations remains an undeniable strong tool for durable change.”

Mugisho Theophile – Co-founder and Executive Director

Since the initiative was first launched in November 2009, COFAPRI has been a Field Partner of Safe World for Women.

COFAPRI co-founders, Valerie Bahati and Mugisho Theophile made contact with Safe World for Women in an online community and were inspired to initiate COFAPRI.

The relationship between COFAPRI and Safe World for Women has continuously developed and the two organisations work closely together with a high level of mutual trust.

In 2014, COFAPRI made ties with It’s A Girl Thing FemPads project. The Organisation has been helping DR Congo women with reusable FEMpads, pants, bras and bars of soap in order to improve their hygienic conditions.
In October 2016, with sustainable support from this organization, the women in rural villages DR Congo will start making their own reusable FEMpads.

COFAPRI also collaborates closely with Thare Machi Education. They help COFAPRI teach the people using educational DVDs.
Not only COFAPRI opens doors to other organisations, but it also works with generous individuals who are willing to support its activities on the field.

COFAPRI always welcomes suggestions of collaboration with other organisations too – and believe that working together is the best way forwards for us all!

The support and involvement of the global community is vitally important to the COFAPRI members.

Please contact us

A Vision for DR Congo’s Children

Bahati Valérie tells of COFAPRI’s plans for a co-ed school focusing on human rights and development.

Interview by Jennifer Timmons

COFAPRI has plans to open a school for children – what do these plans consist of?

COFAPRI [Congolese Females Action for Promoting Rights and Development] will open a school once we have enough means to do so – actually, COFAPRI will open and run it.

These plans consist of opening a school for children of both sexes. The school will mainly deal with human rights and development. This will allow the children to acquire wider notions regarding rights of all human beings, including children, boys and girls.

By educating children, COFAPRI hopes to have built a good foundation for eradicating violence in the future. If the youth are well-prepared, violence can be reduced and the school will be a place where all children, boys and girls, will feel welcome to learn about a harmonious society.

In DRC, children’s education, may it be at home or at school, is still discriminatory. Boys and girls are educated at home in different ways and separately. The boy is prepared to become a respected man and the girl to become a submissive woman. In some areas of the DRC, there exist specific schools for boys and those for girls. These are some of the discriminations COFAPRI wants to combat once this school will be operational.

Could you tell me more about your plans for the Institute for Congolese Females Voicing their Rights (INCOFEVOR)?

INCOFEVOR is the Institute for Congolese Females Voicing their Rights. It will be created in the country, with different representations in the Great Lakes Region (GLR). The institute will educate not only women and girls about human rights, but also the males who abuse them, though some women may also be abusing other females or sometimes engaging in their own self-abuse.

INCOFEVOR will be a school that teaches formally the people, both men and women; currently, COFAPRI teaches informally mostly women and girls. This institute is still in the COFAPRI planning stage and we have no means for the moment to start it.

For the moment, we will need funds to support COFAPRI women, but with INCOFEVOR, funds will help us achieve a lot, such as purchasing the land to build the school or rent a building in which to operate, and purchase a land to start a women’s farm. Also, funds will help support some women and girls who cannot afford paying the fees or can’t get materials to use for classes, materials to use for teaching, like chairs for students to sit, boards, markers, teaching materials, a school restaurant, paying teachers, etc.

The extension of this institute to the Great Lakes Region for empowering the women and girls about their rights will help to raise the awareness of gender issues. The objectives of the institute will be to promote women’s human rights in the region.

What does INCOFEVOR need to provide children with?

It needs to educate children about human rights. A good start is the right way to eradicate social and war violence. They can learn non-violent ways of addressing conflicts and communication as a means to do so.

Help Us to Expand Our Social Enterprise

Help us save more mothers and babies!

To scale up our social enterprise and reach more mothers and babies, we need your help.

We have been selected by the renowned Unreasonable Institute for the 2014 Fellowship programme – dedicated to tackling the world’s biggest problems by giving an “unfair advantage” to entrepreneurs creating solutions to the world’s biggest social and environmental problems.

Help Mother’s Delivery Kits Ventures get to the 2014 Unreasonable Institute, where we will learn from 50 world-class mentors, gain intimate access to 100 investors, and join a global network of Unreasonable entrepreneurs!

The Right of Every Mother and Baby

The Mother’s Delivery Kits have been developed by our medical team at the Brown Button Foundation.

Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Mother’s Delivery Kit Ventures is a social enterprise, established to promote and enhance safe births, and to ensure the sustainability of the work of Brown Button Foundation.

We supply birthing kits to health centres, hospitals, universities, and Traditional Birth Attendants.

We have sold over 6,000 kits in six months, saving at least 6,000 women and babies in rural communities. No new cases of maternal and infant deaths have been recorded by the pregnant women or health facilities that use our kits.

Every mother should be entitled to access to expert health care, regardless of economic status and location, to ensure the health, safety and well-being of herself and her baby.

Help us save a million mothers and babies!

Please donate to the Unreasonable Institute Marketplace appeal to expand our social enterprise

If we don’t raise the full amount to attend the Unreasonable Institute Fellowship Programme, then the funds raised will be used to directly help our beneficiaries, through supplying birth kits and training for birth attendants.

The Unreasonable Institute global program in Boulder, Colorado, USA, is dedicated to tackling the world’s biggest problems by helping and advising entrepreneurs who are creating solutions to the world’s biggest social and environmental problems. They help each venture scale up to meaningfully impact the lives of over 1 million people.

Entrepreneurs are provided with pro-bono executive coaches, support in sustaining their relationships with relevant mentors and funders, guidance and connections from a dedicated team whose main job is to get these ventures funded, and access to our network of 250+ partners, 100+ mentors, 250+ funders, and 82 ventures from 37 countries.

In the past 4 years, 82 ventures from 37 countries have attended our program in Boulder, CO, USA. Collectively they have raised over $37 million in funding, grown their revenues and teams by over 2.5x within a year after leaving Unreasonable, and have impacted over 2,000,000 lives.