On 18 August, Précieuse sat down at the centre to write to the couple who sponsor her. She had seen on television the heatwave sweeping France.
I saw on television that there is a heatwave in France, people are dying and many houses have burned. I hope you are not in danger.
Précieuse, Kinshasa, 18 August 2026
Papa Vincent, I want to tell you that I passed my year with 58.1%. I am going to study nursing… one day, perhaps, I will look after you, when I have finished my nursing studies.
She asks nothing for herself: she worries about them.
Précieuse wants to study nursing at the Red Cross school, where other young people from MONIELO have gone before her — Fanny and Georgette among them.
That choice took five months to form. In March, her interview record read: “She very often talks to us about building, she would like to study architecture and become a civil engineer. She also says sometimes that she would like to care for the sick.” Between March and August, the second option won out over the first.
Précieuse lives at the centre because she is an orphan, and the only person who could look after her is her grandfather, who no longer works and has no safe home to take her into. The educator put it plainly: MONIELO stands in for her family, in every respect. We nonetheless make sure she keeps the link with her grandfather.
Three passes at the State Examination
July was a good month. Jireh scored 73% at the State Examination — the Congolese equivalent of the baccalaureate. Patricia obtained 70% in the mathematics and physics stream, one of the most demanding in the curriculum. Noella, 63% in Latin and philosophy. Three candidates presented, three diplomas.
You have been paying school fees for years without always seeing what they produce. Here is one concrete result.
The school year turns on a deposit
In Kinshasa, a deposit is required for every child. In some schools, a child who has not paid it is left off the examination lists.
| Pupil | Year | School | Deposit | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bénie | 4th | Saint Michel | 450 $ | paid |
| Emmanuel | 4th | Saint Michel | 450 $ | pending |
| Parfaite | 3rd | Saint Michel | 300 $ | pending |
| Jordi | 9th | Saint Michel | 300 $ | pending |
| Shukrani | 7th | Omisalisa | 300 $ | pending |
| Still to cover | 1 350 $ |
To these are added Gabriella and Consolate, who have started at Marcello Zago, for $345.
Emmanuel
Emmanuel is entering the fourth year of the humanités at Saint Michel: the year of the State Examination. His family has had no home of its own since the flood of 2024; his mother is looking for work and cannot, today, pay for his schooling.
Emmanuel wants to study law and become a magistrate.
Gabriella and Consolate
Gabriella passed her year with 63%, her sister Consolate with 60% in the literary stream. Gabriella is entering the first year of the commercial humanités. She wants to become an accountant.
Since 20 July, the two sisters have been living at the MONIELO shelter, their mother no longer being able to pay rent.
On 18 August, Gabriella wrote to her sponsor. Her letter begins like this:
“I heard through papa Henri of a death in your family, someone who was dear to you. I know it is too hard for you, but take heart, maman Pauline. I do not know what to say to console your heart.”
Gabriella, 18 August 2026
Only afterwards, almost apologetically, does she mention the bag, the uniform and the supplies she still does not have.
At the shelter
On 4 September, the centre received its supplies: a sack of dried cassava — fufu —, a sack of charcoal, a sack of sweet potatoes and twenty chikwangue, those loaves of fermented cassava wrapped in leaves. All bought at a good price not far from the MONIELO farm. The children and the team spent the day sorting the cassava and the sweet potatoes, by knife, tuber by tuber.
A third of the sack of sweet potatoes had rotted and had to be thrown out: sweet potato keeps badly without a dry store, whereas cassava, once dried, keeps without difficulty. That is the lesson of this delivery — next time, fewer potatoes and more dried cassava.
These supplies come up by the association’s truck, which travels from the farm to the centre about once a month. The same vehicle that carries goods for Kinshasa’s traders therefore feeds the children at the centre; we come back to this in our letter about the farm. That truck, funded by a donation from the Rotary Club of Charleroi, also allows us to restart the Les Femmes Fortes cooperative project, on the Batéké Plateau.
A sponsor at the farm
Maman Sylvaine is Shukrani’s sponsor. During her stay in Kinshasa, she came and spent two days at the farm with her.
This is the moment when sponsorship stops being abstract. If you are ever thinking of making the journey, tell us: these visits matter as much to the children as to those who make them.
Alice, fourth year of medicine
Deposits, balances, uniforms, sacks of fufu: none of this is measured over a single school year. It is measured ten years later.
Alice is in her fourth year of medicine at Bel Campus University in Kinshasa. She studies alongside Brazelle, also a medical student, who has just entered her third year. Alice joined the sponsorship programme about ten years ago; her sponsors, papa Christophe and maman Brigitte, live in Europe, come from the DR Congo themselves, and see her every time they travel back.
Her father uses a wheelchair. The chair is worn down to the frame and has to be replaced; the replacement is funded by maman Marie-Josée, a retired nurse living in Belgium, met entirely by chance in June during a stopover in Addis Ababa. That father never missed a parents’ meeting at Saint Georges, the school where Alice did her primary and secondary education.
When a sponsor asks what their transfer is for, it is the longest answer to give and the shortest to show: a white coat in a laboratory in Kinshasa.
What we are still short of: food aid
The cost of living is rising in Kinshasa, and many families can no longer feed themselves properly. Thanks to you, the children at the centre are safe from hunger. That is not the case for the sponsored children who live outside the centre, in single-parent families or with relatives.
For them, we want to restart food distributions from the shelter. We had done it in the past, and we hoped we would not have to again; reality obliges us to revise our plans. If funds allow, we would also like to give the children a few outings again.
If you pay income tax in France, a donation of €100 costs you €34 after tax relief.
Thank you for what you make possible.
The whole MONIELO team — Kinshasa and Paris
