My contribution to the Jesuit social apostolate through the Center for Social Action Studies
Patrick MAVINGA - CEPAS Kinshasa DR Congo
I started working in the Jesuit social apostolate in July 2007 at the call of Father Ferdinand Muhigirwa and on the recommendation of Father Rigobert Minani. My role was to animate a forum of civil society organizations, under the leadership of CEPAS, for a better governance and therefore more justice towards the population in the redistribution of revenues from the exploitation of mining resources, especially those living next to these exploitations.
My first contribution was to coordinate the work of civil society experts who had re-evaluated the mining contracts signed by the Republic in order to demonstrate the imbalances and contribute to their revision, by the Ministry of Mines, for the benefit of more (redistributable) income for the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This is how I joined the big family of CEPAS and, since then, all my work has consisted in guiding the population - through associations - so that they take charge of themselves and participate qualitatively - through monitoring or proposals - in the management of public affairs in order to benefit positively from them and to demand more accountability from their leaders.
Our work for the benefit of the population is essentially based on a series of studies conducted to understand the population, the events and the context and to collect the needs, priorities and concerns of this population in order to transform them into a series of actions likely to bring solutions to alleviate the suffering of the community members. I have personally participated and even supervised several of these studies and used their findings to accompany the populations in their quest for wellness.
In 2017, in its search for social justice for the benefit of the population, CEPAS collaborated with some fifty union associations and managed to contribute to the revision of the Congolese worker's minimum wage. This result, achieved without substantial effort, was almost "a miracle" for my team and me. We had not personally put in the amount of effort that would make the government listen to us, but it did. The government raised the salary of the Congolese worker. For us, this was a sign that our God was intervening on behalf of the Congolese worker whose salary was simply an injustice.
On the other hand, despite all the efforts made throughout 2018 in contribution to obtaining a quality electoral process for a change of leadership that can allow the Congolese people to hope for a better tomorrow, despite considerable resources invested in a huge advocacy, we have been disillusioned. It is as if God has not listened to us. All the sweat, all the blood shed by the citizens in search of a better life ended up with a taste of unfinished business. We have not been able to help the people as we wished. Worse, the citizens were set against each other whereas our approach was wanted "consensual" to unite the Congolese, particularly those evolving in the associative movement.
Nevertheless, I can, in total, be grateful for all that the center has allowed me to accomplish: All the young people in the reading clubs who have received the training that I have facilitated to enable them to better evolve within their communities and who put it into practice for the benefit of other citizens; all the leaders that we have influenced to take into consideration the needs, priorities and concerns of the citizens; all the resources that we have been able to access, sometimes with miraculous ease, to carry out the actions of the center for the benefit of the populations for whom we work on a daily basis. I have personally participated and continue to be involved in the supervision of several hundred citizens through the programs of CEPAS. I am infinitely grateful for this.
