City of Joy Update: Fifth Class Graduates!
05/20/2014
V-Day Congo Director/Director of City of Joy Christine Schuler Deschryver updates us about the fifth graduating class of City of Joy:
On 5 May 2014, we ended our 5th training session with an extraordinary ceremony, which included members of Panzi Foundation DRC and the Chairman of the board, Dr. Denis Mukwege. Partners from the grassroots associates were also present, along with past graduates who came to participate in their sisters' victory and healing from their traumas.
Our 5th session graduates organized the ceremony themselves with testimonies regarding their radical change in their lifestyle. They testified that they have begun to boldly do things which they could previously never have thought of doing. A woman from the Banyamulenge tribe explained fearlessly that she arrived at City of Joy with a broken, sullied health filled with hatred inherited from the violence she survived in her village. She could not sleep and completely isolated herself for years, she added. At City of Joy, she learned what LOVE and SHARING are. These are the only easy solutions she has owned to release her trauma and leave the abyss, she shouted. Thanks to therapeutic techniques she was taught, she can sleep deeply, love and open herself to others.