The Good Shepherd Sisters’ programme in Kolwezi has worked since 2013 to take children out of the cobalt mines and back to school, and to give their families ways to live that no longer depend on the pits.
Part of the worldwide Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, whose mission is empowering lives, restoring rights and upholding dignity, Bon Pasteur runs a holistic model in Kolwezi’s artisanal mining communities: education, alternative livelihoods, healthcare and psychosocial support.
On the Nashiriki platform, with the Good Shepherd International Foundation, Bon Pasteur leads the child labour monitoring and remediation project: one secure system for the case work behind every child’s journey out of the mines.
Kolwezi, in Lualaba Province, sits at the heart of the world’s cobalt supply. In its artisanal mining communities, poverty pushes children out of school and into the mines.
Since 2013, Bon Pasteur has worked there with a holistic model: removing children from mining work, reintegrating them into education, training women and girls for decent livelihoods, and organising farming cooperatives so that families no longer depend on the mines. It has been described as the only child-labour intervention operating inside a mining compound.
Beyond the cobalt belt, the team also answers emergencies: with the Good Shepherd International Foundation, it supports families displaced by conflict, from food and clean water to trauma counselling and school reintegration.
Bon Pasteur’s approach treats child labour as a community problem: education for the children, livelihoods for the families, health and protection for everyone.
Informal education, school feeding and reintegration into formal schools, anchored by the Bon Pasteur Centre in Kanina: fourteen classrooms opened in 2019 serving around a thousand children, plus five schools built across the communities.
4,800+ children enrolled, 90% of whom stopped working in the mines
520 children reintegrated into formal schools
Programme figures published by the Good Shepherd International Foundation (gsif.it), 2013 to date.
After Sr. Catherine Mutindi’s arrival in Kolwezi in 2012, the Good Shepherd Sisters and GSIF launch the programme in Domaine Marial, an isolated cobalt-mining area.
Columbia University’s CPC Learning Network publishes Weaving the Web, documenting the child-protection model.
The Bon Pasteur Centre opens in Kanina (14 classrooms); Chakuishi is piloted; founder Sr. Catherine Mutindi receives the $1 million Opus Prize.
Stop Slavery Hero Award (Thomson Reuters Foundation) and Ghai Larissa Award (African Child Policy Forum).
The mobile health clinic takes to the road; programme director Sr. Jane Wainoi receives the EMIL “Hero of Charity” award.
Emergency response for families displaced by the conflict in eastern DRC; a new strategic plan guides the work to 2028.
