In late November 2022, Odiane Lokako, president of the NGO ELCOS, active across the DRC for more than eighteen years, led a large delegation to the province of Équateur. Mr Daniel Freihofer, Deputy Head of Mission at the Swiss Embassy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also took part in the trip.
The purpose of the mission: to launch the construction of the province’s first major technical and vocational training centre.
On arrival, Odiane Lokako met the provincial authorities, including Governor Bobo Boloko Bolumbu, who welcomed her initiative. Together they reviewed the needs and difficulties holding back the development of the province and its young people.
The delegation then travelled to Bakala, a village 17 km from the provincial capital, to lay the first stone of the centre. Young people from the province will be trained there in industrial fishing, agriculture, livestock farming, and the harvesting and processing of timber, the province’s main economic resource.
To get to know the local communities, Odiane Lokako and her delegation visited the indigenous peoples of Bokatola, who spoke of their difficulties in accessing healthcare and education. Odiane Lokako assured them that their concerns were a priority for ELCOS, which works for the inclusion of the province’s indigenous peoples, and stressed the value of their ancestral knowledge in understanding and protecting the forests of the Congo Basin.
On behalf of ELCOS, she also handed 56 bags of cement to the Catholic women of the Archdiocese of Mbandaka-Bikoro, to build a multipurpose hall supporting their economic independence.
The delegation ended its visit in the historic village of Bokote, 363 km from Mbandaka, where the relics of Blessed Isidore Bakanja rest and where a museum dedicated to him will be built.
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