Empowering Communities in Burundi: Providing Care for Families, Children, and the Elderly

Promise Academy of Burundi

Promise Academy Phase 1

  • Phase 1 of Promise Academy is complete, featuring a finished wall, reception hall, kitchen, landscaping, furniture, and electricity to the village, benefiting the whole community. The Reception Hall generates income that will one day make Promise Academy self-sustaining.

Promise Academy Phase 2:

  • Phase 2 includes classrooms, dormitories, a cafeteria, and a commons area, creating an ideal learning environment. We're dedicated to Mama Georgette's dream of empowering Burundi's children to become productive, generous community members.

Orphan Care / Orphanage

Georgette’s 2010 dream of opening a program for orphaned children became a reality in 2013. The orphanage is remarkable in that each child welcomed into the home becomes part of the family. Small in size (only 21 children), the emotional, spiritual, and physical needs of these children are profoundly and lovingly met. Evidence of this is that of the handful of orphans who have “aged out” of the home, all have returned to “give back” in whatever capacity they can: as seamstress for the school uniforms, carpool driver/auto mechanic, or operations assistant to the director. This orphanage defies all stereotypes as a place of belonging, a true home to its children.

Meals for Children

Since its inception in 2016, BMP has offered more than 1,095,000 meals to malnourished children in Burundi, with Mama Georgette's team ensures daily nutritious meals for children and their mothers living in the slums of a big city and in remote villages.

While most children receive the ingredients needed to make a nutritious meal for each day, others (one hundred of the sickest, most vulnerable children in hospitals) are served a finely blended, easily digestible cereal made for immediate consumption. These children, facing certain demise from malnutrition and disease, are able to return to their families and to life.

In the face of recent severe food shortages and increased food cost, your ongoing support enables BMP to secure essential supplies like rice, peanuts, soy beans, and powdered milk.

Burundi Farm Project

Burundi is often called the "bread basket" of Africa, thanks to its fertile soil and two harvest seasons each year. In 2018, with an eye toward encouraging programmatic sustainability, a few Burundians donated their family properties to become working farms. Some of the land has been used for growing crops. These crops ( corn, soybeans, potato, beans, cabbage, and more) can be sold at market for a profit, helping to offset the costs of our Meals for Children program. Another, larger plot has been designated for raising chickens, sheep, goats, and cows. And so, the Burundi Farm Project was established.

In 2023, Sandra oversaw the construction of a beautiful new open-air barn for the cattle. Animal health is promoted by a clean environment and food harvested from the other farms.

Family Care Center

At the Family Care Center, 41 children enjoy 3 nourishing meals each day. When these children first were invited to the opening of the center in 2022, they were languid, underfed, infested and ailing. The most urgent task, after a warm meal, was treating their hands, feet and scalps with various natural (and readily available) remedies, including baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, and palm oil. In only two weeks, enormous changes in health were noted. Many children improved so much that they began to smile, sing, and engage in playful activities. After 3 months, teachers and community leaders remarked at the significant physical and academic progress of the children. Mothers also receive valuable training in home hygiene and the preparation of nutrient-rich meals at the center.

Sunrise Assisted Living Home

Mama Georgette's compassion extended to those beyond children. She used her own resources to help widowed grandmothers, an elderly woman unable to fetch water, and elderly nuns in need.  Your generosity on Giving Tuesday, 2022, not only enabled Mama Georgette to open Burundi's first-ever private assisted living facility, Sunrise Assisted Living Home, but also ensured that this new program was fully funded for 2023. Today, residents enjoy a home where their needs, including food, clean water, dignity, community, and hope, are being met.

All proceeds raised by BMP on Giving Tuesday, November 28, 2023, will again support this amazing home for orphaned elderly.