It’s been a good year... You:

• Launched 10 village microfinance coops
• Empowered 500 people to rise out of extreme global poverty

We multiply our impact when we unite.  The women of our program matched you step-by-step.  As their businesses became profitable, they joined together to organize community building projects so:

• 1,500 farmers can grow more food and can better feed 15,000 people thanks to a sustainable irrigation program
• 20,000 people have safe access to clean drinking water
• 30,000 at-risk people access safe latrines, cutting their risk for cholera by 80%

Let’s launch 100 new Microfinance Coops with women survivors in Eastern Congo with our Holiday Appeal! With you on board, we can do it!

You took a risk, you believed in the power of connection, and together we took the first step to build peace from the ground up.  A year later, it’s time to celebrate and to keep the momentum going. Today, we can take that next step together. 

I knew I was seeing first-hand the real life impact of your contributions when I met Esperance. When her life was shattered by conflict, she didn’t give up.  She led our first village microfinance coop, started a small business, and reclaimed her life.  She is now pioneering our Community Health Worker program and believes in a future where she heals her community and creates a new, healthy Congo.

Thank you for joining our Holiday Appeal and Resolve update!

This is all because of you!

With Resolve,

Vijaya Thakur
Executive Director

We began issuing microloans of $40 per woman and running financial literacy trainings. We quickly saw an increase in the women's financial security and improvement in the living conditions for themselves and their families. Through our microloans, women in Eastern Congo have started small businesses, enriched their communities, and created a viable path to peace. As women become self-sustaining entrepreneurs, they turn a vicious cycle of violence into a circle of prosperity. Together they vote on how to use their pooled repayments, often electing to organize new co-ops in order to extend the same opportunities to other women in the community. Together, they develop and expand the local economy outside the control of belligerent parties, creating interdependent communal networks that thrive on peace.

Esperance (Hope) was among the first women to participate in Resolve Network’s Microfinance Program. She was instantly inspired to join when an opportunity to improve her family’s quality of life presented itself. She quickly assumed a natural leadership role within her microfinance sub-group, wanting to be a mentor to help other women successfully navigate their small businesses. Her leadership goals extend beyond economic sustainability, recognizing the importance of grassroots communication in conflict resolution and educating community members on sanitation and hygiene practices. 

As a certified nurse, Esperance has been key in pioneering Resolve Network’s new Community Health Worker Program. In her spare time, Esperance volunteers at the Nyantende Hospital in the Gender-Based Violence program, counseling HIV positive patients and educating on family planning issues. She hopes to one day be able to open a pharmacy in her church that will provide for the healthcare needs of her community.

“What motivated me, what compelled me, to go to medicine school is this: I wanted to help people, my community is suffering a lot and I wanted to help them to fix their health problems regardless their origins, regardless their tribes. We need unity in the region and we should make sure all the people involved in the conflict sit down on the same table and discuss and fix the problem peacefully.”

- Esperance, Bukavu, DRC (2011)

Resolve Network DRC Visit from Resolve Network on Vimeo.

Women from the village of Mumosho, Eastern DRC, receive microloans and financial literacy training from Resolve Network program staff.
Produced by Vijaya Thakur, Mark Walker, John Veit & Chloe Manchester Mark Walker Director of Photography John Veit Editor, Audio

- Rural clinic in Mudeka

Our program integrates community health worker trainings in rural communities with an open-source communication platform to connect remote villages to urban health care providers.

This platform will maintain a comprehensive network between the community health workers and local clinics and hospitals to create a system of superior patient care, referrals, follow-up treatment, etc. Resolve Network currently partners with 46 clinics and 8 hospitals to provide support for the community health workers. By decentralizing how health care is provided to rural communities, Resolve hopes to fill the devastating gaps in the system left by severely underdeveloped infrastructure and years of conflict.

The most prevalent health issues facing rural communities are entirely preventable or treatable, but remain serious health risks because of the lack of access to adequate medical care. By maximizing resources and improving efficiency of care, we can amplify the treatment potential of our program to combat devastating health concerns like maternal mortality, malaria, cholera, and malnutrition.

Using cellphones as basic and  accessible technology, WeNet and our Community Health Worker Program will implement innovative and pragmatic solutions to rural health concerns in the DRC. By connecting people, mapping problems, and coordinating solutions we are adapting a sustainable solution in the hands of those at the community level.

The effectiveness of conflict prevention and rapid intervention depends on access to reliable on-the-ground intelligence, identifying where and when a crisis is likely to occur. Recognizing the importance of rebuilding connectivity in Eastern Congo, Resolve is launching WeNet, an open source text-messaging based information platform that will help predict, warn of, and prevent violence, using easily accessible and affordable technology. This comprehensive approach is both an empowerment tool as well as a source of coherent, real-time data to track local threats on the ground. 

Isolation breeds insecurity.

At the heart of the WeNet program is a mission to directly target the culture of vulnerability bred out of geo-political and societal isolation, especially with regards to women as victims of sexual violence. 

We will explore the use of other mechanisms such as video chat and live blogging to address issues of inclusion, improve program monitoring and maintain ongoing evaluation efforts that will allow for transition towards sustainability.

We are called Resolve Network in honor of the incredible determination of our participants and the inspiring network of women that have already proven that peace is not only possible, it is practical.

From our successes, we now look to the future. We are developing programs to work on a larger, societal, level, once again building peace with strategic upwards momentum. It is so much more than the implementation of a program – it is about belief in a philosophy.

Extending peacebuilding  to include grassroots participation, Resolve is committed to redirecting the source of power into the hands of those who have been most affected by years of ethnic conflict, civil war, and severe economic underdevelopment.

Your contribution is not only instilling faith in the principles upon which we built Resolve, it is an investment in a community, a society, and humanity.  

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© Photographs property of Resolve Network