LUBUNGA PAN AFRICAN HOUSE FOR COMMUNITY SERVICES, INC

BRIEF HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The organization was established in Clarkston, Georgia, in the United States of America on March 23, 2018.

The idea of establishing this not-for-profit initiative came out one year and four months following the resettlement of founder Mkwala Elocho R. Alphonse in the United States of America.

Upon arriving in the United States of America on November 8th, 2016, the founder was among Congolese refugees who were among the few refugees who could speak English and were willing to bring support and help the non-English refugee speakers who were in the majority. After volunteering and helping refugees for one year, while helping refugee agencies as a translator, and helper at different offices mainly hospitals for appointments and other health issues, transportation to various areas namely stores, jobs search, making understand the written documents, and facilitating telephone calls, helping register the children at schools, I decided to initiate the organization to professionally serve the refugee communities within the state of Georgia and outside it. Between 2017 and 2018, I managed to help and facilitate 205 refugees access their medical appointments, and 137 refugees found their jobs.

I managed to translate 323 English-written letters or documents from different offices. The documents were translated or made understandable from English to Swahili. I managed to facilitate 417 refugees to access stores or markets within the state of Georgia. I also helped facilitate more than 20 meetings involving refugees and service providers. All these and other social services, made me establish the organization to assist refugees and immigrants access services.

The name of the organization is Lubunga Pan African House for Community Services, Inc. The word “Lubunga” is from the Kibembe language which is one of the African Congolese dialects spoken in the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Lubunga means a traditional African house or hut or architecture whereby elders meet to discuss diverse issues affecting the villages cities or locations. The word was purposefully used to be an organization whereby people mostly refugees on one side and non-refugee people on the other side discuss and exchange means, issues, strategies, and activities to empower refugees for self-reliant lives.

Global Objective of the Organization

To help refugee and immigrant communities generate and create income to meet basic needs and sustain lives.

Specific Objectives

1. To improve refugee and immigrant communities’ wellbeing .

2. To inspire disadvantaged communities to re-brain and build successful destinies.

3. To increase general awareness among all categories of people on socio-economic issues

4. To enable disadvantaged people mostly refugees and immigrants to get involved in self-reliant and self-sufficient projects for better and measurable life.

5. To provide social services to different communities to access public and private services upon their arrival in the United States.

6. To educate youth on substance abuse, sexual and gender-based violence, child abuse, etc. so that they can avoid any behavior that is against the state/country and federal laws.

7. To help immigrants with income-generating activities for their self-reliant lives.

8. To offer settlement services including orientations, information, counseling, and cultural interpretation for recently arrived immigrants.

9. To mobilize resources (i.e. human, organizational, financial, information, etc.) to support our projects for communities’ benefits at city, state, and federal levels.

10. To involve and engage communities in micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises for income generations while supporting their initiatives.

11. To conduct and implement projects aiming at ensuring beneficiaries manage their lives on their own.