The Batwa Project is run by HfC (Harvest for Christ). Meeting the needs of this forgotten people group. Here's a cutting from their website, it outlines the work for the Batwa people...
1. Habitation
This people live in very small huts and it is very deplorable to see a family made of a father, a mother and five children living in a hut of less than two square meters, covered by some grass, with a transparent roof, to mean that when it rains the family is wet. One can wonder how the whole family with grown up children can sleep in a one room hut and what happens when it rains heavily.
Toilet is everywhere for them. This means that there is no toilet and people go everywhere around when they want to use a toilet. You can find a village of 100 families with no single toilet and from this, one can see a picture of the area in terms of hygiene.
2. Food
Subsequently to their history, Batwa do not have land to cultivate. They have very small plots where are built their huts. In some regions the government distributed plots of land but enough only for a small house. This lack of land to cultivate submits this group of people to extreme and ongoing hunger. Moreover, this people become an object of exploitation due to the fact that they have nothing to eat except when they have worked in the fields of the rich. They have no other way and they can’t negociate the cost of their work. That is why when parents have worked for a whole day they get one or two kilograms of maize flour to feed only their children’s night meal. It’s worthy mentioning here that batwa people eat once a day and a very small quantity, and even some days pass the whole day without eating.
HfC tries to meet Batwa nutritional needs in different ways:
At first, we distributed seeds and felitilizers to families of batwa in Muramvya and Busiga – we have not yet been able to help all the batwa villages in the country – so that they grow their own crops, and thus, become less dependent to other people. Seeds of beans and potatoes have been several times distributed. To increase the fertility of their small plots, give goats to batwa families, these ones help the batwa to get fertilizers but, in the future, they will help them to meet other needs as they are multiplying by giving birth to others.
As it is difficult to Batwa people to wait for their crops to be ripe, we some times distribute food like beans and rice. We also organize eating days with their kids on some days like Christmas days.
Some families have no single plot and we are obliged to hire for them plots of lands. Besides, we organize common agriculture for the families of Muramvya. They come and cultivate together on our ground at Karubabi, follow together the crops and harvest together. They divide the products and everyone takes their part home but they keep common seeds for the following season. This helps them to learn together how to cultivate and also strengthen their unity and social cohesion.
3. Health
The bad life conditions have been submitting batwa people to very high range of mortality, especially for children. Being subjects to lack of access to clean water, sanitation or medical care, they were dying awfully. That is why we decided to bring those who were sick to hospital and pay their bill. We are always finding those who are sick and bring them to hospital. We also ask doctors members of HfC or from our partners in other countries to come and help the people in terms of health. Il is in that context that a team of dentists from Dentist Fellowship Community ( America) come every year to help Batwa people and communities around them. To ameliorate sanitation, we have provided safe water to Batwa village in Busiga.
4. Education
We are convinced that good life is based to education. Batwa people are not educated. This is one of the main reasons that they are not living the social life other Burundian people are living. HFC recently opened the first primary school in Muramvya recognizing that the long-term solution for Batwa is education. Employing teachers who are providing an excellent standard of education in an encouraging environment in order to invest in the next generation. As well as covering school fee’s HFC help families by providing necessary school materials and uniforms.