She was placed in the sun this morning. No one has come back for her yet.
My name is Mwema Jimmy. I live on Idjwi Island, in the middle of Lake Kivu, eastern Congo — one of the most isolated, most forgotten corners of the world.
Seven years ago, I started an NGO called Circle of Life because I could not look away from what was happening around me.
The young people of Idjwi are leaving — to Bukavu, to Goma, to Kinshasa. What they leave behind are their parents and grandparents. Old people in their seventies, eighties, nineties. Completely alone. No pension. No welfare. No one whose job it is to check on them.
No one — except my team and me.
For seven years, every month, I have used $100 of my own salary to buy food and fuel. My volunteers and I visit over 200 elderly people. We bring corn flour for their porridge. We sit with them. We repair their broken roofs. We check that they are still alive.
Sometimes, they are not.
I have arrived at a home and found someone who had been dead for a week. A whole week. Alone. Undiscovered. No one had known.
I visit a woman who cannot move herself. Every morning a neighbour carries her outside and leaves her in the sun. If he comes back that evening, she is brought inside. If not — she stays through the night. Exposed. Immobile. Alone. Unable to call for anyone.
When I come and sit with her, she takes my hand and does not want to let go.
I have seen people who own one set of clothing. People sleeping on straw on floors that flood when it rains. People with TB and infected wounds and no one to take them for care. People who have not spoken to another human being since the last time I came.
There is no government for them here. There is no other NGO. There is nothing — except us, on almost no money, every single month.
I run a small corn milling business on the island. When the mill runs properly, it earns a profit. That profit is everything: the food I bring, the medicine I buy, the roofs I fix, the blankets I carry. The machines exist. What I need is the operational funding — fuel, maintenance, working capital — to keep it running.
I have the machines. I have the volunteers. I have seven years of trust built with these communities. What I do not have is enough to do this properly.
YOUR GIFT DOES THIS:
✅ $8.33 — feeds one elderly person for one full month
✅ $25 — three months of food and welfare checks for one person
✅ $50 — repairs a leaking roof so someone doesn't sleep in the rain
✅ $100 — matches what Mwema Jimmy gives from his own salary every month, every month, for seven years
✅ $350 — runs the mill for one month, funding food, medicine, blankets and roof repairs for 200 elders
✅ $20,000 — fully funds Year 1: 200 people fed monthly, 40 shelter repairs, medicine, blankets, fortnightly visits for the most vulnerable, and no one dying undiscovered again
These people survived wars. They raised families. They built communities on an island the world forgot. They deserve to end their lives knowing someone came.
Please give what you can. Please share this. Every dollar goes into that mill — and out the other side, into the hands of the people who need it most.
They are running out of time. Let’s make sure they don’t spend what is left alone.
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