We’d like to welcome Espérance Mères et Enfants (EME-RDC) to the KCS members’ network.
Based in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Kivu province, the organisation is a non-profit and non-governmental organisation created in 2016. Its main areas of intervention are child protection and gender. EME-RDC works to raise awareness about women’s and child rights and to promote women’s participation in decision-making processes, with a particular focus on the protection of war-affected children in South Kivu; strengthening the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse of children in schools and communities; and assistance to child victims of sexual violence.
As always, we welcome their comment on why they decided to join the KCS members’ network, in their own words:
What made you decide to join the KCS members’ network?
Our main ambition in implementing child protection is to contribute to the improvement of the living conditions of vulnerable children who are victims of rights abuses and live in rural areas with high precariousness and low accessibility. Child protection is everyone’s business, and everyone is asked to contribute in a small way to save the lives of thousands of children at risk.
The harmful situations that prevail in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo due to wars that have been repeated for more than two decades and the natural disasters that have been raging in this part of the country lately, motivate us enormously to accentuate our actions aiming at protecting the children who have been made vulnerable by these tragedies through different protection activities
What is your key driver in implementing child safeguarding?
We are convinced that together we are stronger. Our commitment to joining the KCS network is to improve our work in favour of children through the exchange of experiences between the members of the network and the discovery of professional expertise of different organisations that advocate for the promotion, protection and defence of children’s rights around the world.
Where do you think your organisation will be regarding child safeguarding in a year?
We believe that our organisation will become a reference organisation in child protection in our area of action, and even in our country, thanks to the capacity building and strategic orientations that we will obtain as a member organisation of the KCS network. We will have an internal child protection policy that will be taken into account in all our interventions and our staff will be required to highlight it for the promotion of children’s rights as an actor in child protection.
What message do you want to tell your staff, donors and the wider world?
We are committed to making a difference for the well-being of vulnerable children everywhere, without discrimination. We promise a fairer and more equitable world for all children, everyone must contribute to a healthy and enabling environment for a better world for all children.