Burundi Mission

Home | Demographics | Traffic Exchange | About Us

The Missionary Disciples of Christ, Inc.
A Non-Profit Religious Corporation

The purpose of the Burundi Mission is to help the people of Burundi escape the bonds of poverty and despair to become a people with contemporary skills that can be used by them to become self-supporting and have the basic necessities of life.

Take for instance The Batwa people in Burundi. They count for around 1% of the total population and are among the poorest of the poor there. Traditionally, they used to support themselves by making pottery and hunting. However, a number of factors changed their way of life for the worst. There are no more forests for them to hunt in and the modern way of life has brought Burundian people to use other utensils for their cooking instead of pots.

The Batwa were landless and use to lead a nomadic lifestyle. Now, they find themselves in a very difficult situation; they are confined in terms of mobility and have no skills with which to make a decent living. Furthermore, very few of them have had any formal education.

The Batwa are a pygmy people and it's very hard to be a pygmy in Burundi. For years, they were discriminated against. It was unheard of to share the same food with them, and intermarriage was a very rare and dangerous thing.

Today, pygmies like the Batwa live in even more extreme poverty than the rest of Burundi, and they suffer hunger daily.

For things to change, pygmy children need schooling, but they don't have school supplies. It costs about one US$ a month to send a pygmy child to school there. That is a lot of money for a pygmy to raise. When they can get work, they often work in rice fields, 12 hours a day, to earn the equivalent of five cents (USD). And they run the risk of stepping on land mines while doing so. Burundi is a land that has been ravaged by civil war and land mines are prevalent.

We invite you to explore this website to learn more about the people of Burundi and the help they need. And please click on the donation image above to the right and when you get to the payment gateway, enter whatever amount you can afford. Every little bit helps.

Thank you and God bless.

Home | Demographics | Traffic Exchange | About Us