The small NGO Handup Congo and the lively With One Voice Community Choir, led by Robert Teicher, are organising a Concert for Congo on Sunday, November 6, from 2 to 4pm at Pitt Street Uniting Church, 264 Pitt Street, near Town Hall. Proceeds from the concert go to a Pygmy orphan project, where the children have established a duck farming social enterprise with sales of eggs making it possible for them to attend school.
Open to all, the concert will feature dynamic traditional dance, song and drumming by well-known African performers – many of them refugees who have fled conflict zones in their homelands and now call Australia home. Following the concert, stalls featuring African handicrafts, honey and books as well as other treats will provide opportunities for continued community interaction.
The Ducks for Congo initiative is supported by HandUp Congo, which works closely with Rotary Australia World Community Service. HandUp Congo regularly takes volunteer teams to the Congo to work on a range of capacity building projects and sustainable community development strategies with grassroots communities, ranging from emergency medicine education to bee keeping by Pygmies. Congo’s Indigenous peoples are the most marginalised in a country that is at the bottom of the United Nations’ Human Development Index.
The co-founder of HandUp Congo is Lucy Hobgood-Brown, a Hunters Hill resident who grew up in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “My family has more than 100 years of connections to the Congo,” she explains, “and it’s heart-warming to see how generous Australians are with their time and support.”
The Pygmy orphans have huge needs, she adds, because of their remote location 300 km from the nearest town, the few resources in the village to make an income, and the poverty in that area of Congo. “There are more than 200 orphans who simply don’t go to school because they have no tuition money or funds to pay for school uniforms, a state requirement,” Lucy states. “This concert will help give them a hand up, not a handout.”
