The year started with chaos.

When rebel forces advanced toward Goma in January, gunfire echoed across the city. News spread quickly that M23 had taken control. By nightfall, families were fleeing in every direction, carrying whatever they could hold. Banks closed. Roads jammed with people escaping on foot. A city of millions faced the unknown.

Jeremie knew that everything was about to change. 

He was no longer just responsible for himself.
He had become responsible for a team, for communities, for families who saw him and African Leadership Congo as a lifeline.

This is how Jeremie began his first year as Executive Director of AL Congo, weighted with the burden of another war.

“Should we remain in grief, or take the first step with the strength we have?”

Jeremie leads African Leadership Congo, an African-born organization focused on peacebuilding, healing, and community restoration in a region where war is never far away. He is a dreamer who believes in unlocking the potential he believes is in everyone. But the day Goma fell forced him into a new depth of leadership - one that required a new level of courage, wisdom, and stability.

He never walked alone.

In his first year as Country Director, Jeremie found an anchor in Tito, the Continental Coordinator with the African Leadership network. Tito knows what it means to lead in crisis - how to make impossible decisions when the world is falling apart, how to carry a team’s fear as well as their hope, how to show up even when you feel empty.

African Leadership didn’t just give Jeremie skills - it gave him someone who could stand with him in the hardest moments, someone who could say, “I’ve been where you are.”

He went to the children first.

At Flame of Love Orphanage, 215 children and caregivers were down to their last supplies. Jeremie arrived not just with resources but with presence - sitting with the children, speaking hope, reminding them they had not been forgotten.

At Bethel Church, more than 250 children huddled together in fear. Among them were 23 widows and their children. Jeremie rallied a team together to be with them in community, encouraging them with hope, and providing food and water generously funded by supporters.

He went to the teachers next.

At EPA Furaha Primary School, 21 teachers were educating 540 students, many of whom had fled with nothing. Jeremie brought direct support and called out the importance of continuing education - inviting teachers to their full potential and students back into classrooms despite what was happening on the outside.

He went to the land - because food is more than survival.

Drawing on his background in sustainable agriculture, Jeremie encouraged and supported local leaders as they leaned more heavily on the land for food and income when trade routes collapsed and resources became scarce. Those leaders returned to their communities and launched projects that fed families, created income, helped build schools, and provided stability when everything else felt unstable.

Even in war, crops grew. Seeds planted months earlier sustained families.
This is what locally led development looks like - it keeps giving even when crisis hits.

And then, he went to the wounds no one can see.

Years of conflict have carved deep trauma into the hearts of people in eastern Congo. Jeremie knows these wounds personally. He created places where people could cry, pray, talk, and breathe again - in churches, on school grounds, under trees, and in displacement camps. At the same time, he trained local leaders in trauma healing so they could support their neighbors in practical, holistic ways. 

And the impact? It is extraordinary.

Because Jeremie chose to lead with courage, thousands of lives were touched through African Leadership Congo.

• 1,041 students enrolled in leadership classes

• 397 graduates completed their programs

• 409 new students began courses

• 50 displaced families (200+ people) found support

• 40 displaced students received emergency assistance

• 215 orphanage residents were cared for

• Widows and children sheltered and supplied

• Teachers, staff, and leaders received help when their own homes were lost

You can help create more leaders like Jeremie today

As the year started in chaos and has remained in chaos, there is so much promise we’ve seen - and we are helping build the dreams that are getting bigger. Your support equips courageous African leaders, like Jeremie, who are bringing stability, dignity, and hope in the very places where hope is hardest to find.

Back bold leaders. Be part of the story. Invest in what lasts.