A Red Cross burial worker shows a man how to put on protective gloves before the inspection of the body of an 11-month old girl who died during the Ebola outbreak in the town of Rutshuru in North Kivu province, February 2020.
From the outset, I was trying to think of ways to collaborate with Congolese journalists that was somehow hopeful, in a country that is only starting to be emerging from generations of exploitation and conflict and misrule, dating all the way back to the Belgian colonial era, which has cast a really long shadow over the country.Red Cross burial workers the body of an 11-month old girl who died in the town of Rutshuru during the Ebola outbreak, February 2020.
I was hoping to bring an approach like that to the Carmignac award, and in a curious kind of twist of fate, I was unable to travel due to borders being closed.
The idea was really to look at to take a cautiously optimistic approach to where the country is now, and where it’s short term future could be. There are many reasons to be skeptical or take a bleak view of Congo because of all these major problems in the past, but if you look at the way the youth movement is challenging those norms, it really is fascinating.
So there are lots of challenges and there are lots of reasons to be pessimistic about Congo but the focus on this project was to look where things are being driven forward by individuals and small groups of people who are really pushing hard for positive change, mostly at the local level. The idea behind the project, as it now stands, remains the same.