WHAT THIS FUND IS

The HUMANDREAM DRC Fund is a strategic partnership between two organizations with distinct and complementary roles. Community Support Center / CSC-Asbl is a women-led civil society organization based in Uvira, South Kivu, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, with eight years of proven programme delivery serving thousands of displaced women, children, and youth annually. HUMANDREAM Foundation is a U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) and the first minority- and woman-founded organization of its kind to serve as a dedicated capacity-building and fundraising infrastructure partner for grassroots women’s organizations in Eastern DRC.

CSC-Asbl brings the proof. HUMANDREAM brings the architecture that makes the proof legible to the world. Neither role is subordinate to the other. The fund is built on the premise that transformative community-led work and the infrastructure required to sustain it are equally necessary, and that the gap between them is what has kept organizations like CSC-Asbl chronically underfunded despite delivering measurable, verifiable outcomes for years.

WHY THIS STRUCTURE

The question worth asking directly is why a U.S. intermediary is part of this equation at all. CSC-Asbl’s programme model is proven. Its leadership is experienced and credentialed. Its community trust is deep. So why not apply directly?

The structural barriers between grassroots organizations in conflict-affected regions and international philanthropic capital are not incidental. They are systemic. Bilateral donors, private foundations, and corporate giving programmes require U.S.-standard accounting, audit-ready documentation, and outcome measurement systems as prerequisites for engagement, not as final evaluations. They require funder-grade narrative architecture: the ability to frame the same programme in the language of a gender-equity foundation, a corporate CSR committee, and a multilateral agency simultaneously, and to sequence those asks so that early wins build the credibility for later ones. They require multi-funder portfolio management so that no single funder carries disproportionate weight and no two funders are asked to underwrite the same programme element.

HUMANDREAM is not a fiscal sponsor or a pass-through vehicle. It is the strategic intelligence layer that determines which goal goes to which funder at which stage of the relationship. It designs the monitoring and evaluation systems that allow CSC-Asbl to demonstrate impact across multiple grant cycles. It maintains the financial controls that open bilateral and institutional funding lanes. It translates lived experience into the language of international philanthropy without imposing external priorities or erasing local voice. And it manages the full funder portfolio so that CSC-Asbl’s leadership can remain focused on programme delivery rather than donor administration.

Ruby Guillen, who serves on HUMANDREAM’s Advisory Board and chairs the United States delegation on United Nations Human Rights, provides strategic counsel connecting this work to the highest levels of global policy discourse on gender equity and economic justice. Her involvement is a signal of the institutional seriousness and long-term ambition behind this fund.

“Eastern DR Congo carries extraordinary weight, and the women, children, youth, and communities we serve demonstrate extraordinary strength. What has been missing is connection to a world that sees them clearly and stands with them fully. This fund builds that bridge.”

— Byolenganya Olo Bernoulli, Founder and Executive Director, Community Support Center / CSC-Asbl

THE PROGRAMME: COMMUNITY SUPPORT CENTER / CSC-ASBL

Founded in 2016 and led by Byolenganya Olo Bernoulli, CSC-Asbl operates across eight programme areas in Uvira, South Kivu: women’s economic empowerment, sustainable agriculture and environmental management, youth education and scholarships, sports-based peacebuilding, trauma therapy and psychosocial support, children’s safeguarding, sexual and reproductive health, and community resilience.

In 2024, CSC-Asbl reached 3,724 lives across the region. Its EmpowerHer programme delivered leadership, entrepreneurship, and life-skills training to 50 women and girls at Kitundu IDP Camp. Its PAFA and Seed the Future agricultural initiatives trained 50 women in resilient farming practices and 47 farmers in Kawizi while planting 100 fruit trees. Its Play4Peace mental health programme engaged 250 participants, 38 percent of them girls. Its annual community gathering drew more than 1,300 participants with coverage from local radio and television.

CSC-Asbl accomplished this on a total 2024 budget of $19,000, with only 4 percent allocated to administrative costs and the remainder of its staff serving as volunteers. That figure is not a programme ceiling. It is the baseline from which this fund is designed to scale.

South Kivu is among the lowest-ranked subnational regions in the world on the UNDP Human Development Index, falling significantly below DRC’s already-low national HDI of 0.542. The communities CSC-Asbl serves sit at the intersection of armed conflict, mass displacement, and the systematic targeting of women and girls, in one of the world’s most chronically underfunded humanitarian contexts. The programme footprint CSC-Asbl has built in that environment is not merely impressive. It is the foundation that this fund is designed to build upon.

PROGRAMME FOCUS: WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT

The fund’s anchor programming expands CSC-Asbl’s women’s economic empowerment portfolio, building the skills, entrepreneurship capacity, and financial stability of displaced and conflict-affected women in one of the world’s most underserved regions.

Phase One scales CSC-Asbl’s EmpowerHer programme from 50 to 200 participants annually, pairs skills training with the existing PAFA sustainable agriculture network, and builds the monitoring and evaluation infrastructure needed to track and demonstrate income-generation outcomes across multiple grant cycles. Phase Two expands geographic reach into additional displacement sites in Uvira territory and introduces a financial inclusion component, linking programme graduates to savings groups and microfinance channels. Phase Three documents the model as a replicable proof-of-concept for other conflict-affected geographies worldwide.

CSC-Asbl has already articulated its 2025-2026 goals around this arc: 200 women trained in sustainable farming, 250 scholarships for displaced children, formal M&E systems operational by end of 2025, and a permanent community centre by end of 2026. HUMANDREAM’s role is to connect those goals to the funders, the reporting infrastructure, and the global visibility that can make them real.

“The HUMANDREAM DRC Fund exists because the world cannot afford to look away from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The work being done there by organisations like CSC-Asbl is a proof point for all of humanity. We are building the infrastructure to make that proof impossible to ignore.”

— Mesan Che Richardson, Founder, HUMANDREAM Foundation

DRC AS GLOBAL PROOF POINT

The HUMANDREAM DRC Fund is not a regional initiative. It is the first deployment of a model designed to be replicated worldwide. DRC has been chosen as the proof point not in spite of its complexity but because of it. If a community-led, women-centered development model can demonstrate measurable outcomes in Uvira, South Kivu, it can demonstrate them anywhere.

Every funder who invests in this initiative is not only transforming lives in Eastern DRC. They are validating a template for how international philanthropy can show up differently for the communities that need it most, and building the evidentiary record that makes the next version of this model possible in the next geography.

INVITE A CONVERSATION

Philanthropies, bilateral institutions, corporate foundations, and purpose-driven individuals are invited to invest in this initiative. We welcome conversations at any stage of your giving process.

HUMANDREAM Foundation  |  www.humandream.org

Mesan Che Richardson  |  mesanche@humandream.org  |  (818) 256-5556

 

About HUMANDREAM Foundation

HUMANDREAM Foundation is building the world’s first unifying global civic identity and platform to align humanity around a shared aspiration to end poverty, advance peace, freedom, and equality, and convert that alignment into measurable collaborative action. HUMANDREAM is a U.S.- minority- and woman-founded 501(c)(3) organization. Learn more at www.humandream.org.

About Community Support Center / CSC-Asbl

Founded in 2016 and based in Uvira, South Kivu, Community Support Center / CSC-Asbl supports women, children, and youth who have survived war, ethnic conflict, displacement, and natural disasters in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Through trauma therapy, education, women’s economic empowerment, environmental sustainability, and peace-building through sport, CSC-Asbl reached 3,724 individuals in 2024. Learn more at www.csc-drc.org.