City of Joy founder on transforming women’s pain into a future
Eve Ensler and Christine Schuler Deschryver, co-founders of a remarkable organisation in the DRC, will be in Brussels this month to speak about the vital work they do helping women rebuild shattered lives
A place of healing
Christine Schuler Deschryver, who has Flemish roots, is the director of City of Joy. Since 2011, her organisation has taken in women aged 18 to 30, up to 90 of them at a time, and provided therapies to help them overcome the severe traumas they have experienced.
Women here are seen as autonomous human beings, capable of redirecting their lives on their own terms, even after they have been subjected to extreme forms of gender-based violence. City of Joy founders Schuler Deschryver and Vagina Monologues scribe Eve Ensler will present their work at a special evening in Brussels this month.
City of Joy grew out of the work of Dr Denis Mukwege, last year’s winner of the United Nations Prize in the field of human rights. He is the founder and director of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, which specialises in treating women who have been subjected to extreme sexual violence, often by rebel forces.
Women who had been healed physically shared with Mukwege their need for the healing to go beyond their bodies. Their minds and spirits would also need to be rebuilt if they were to regain strength enough to continue their lives in meaningful ways. It’s no accident that the motto at City of Joy is “transform pain into a future”.
Transformative work
It’s a motto that speaks directly to the life of the woman who leads the transformative work. Schuler Deschryver is a daughter of the Flemish bourgeoisie: Her father, Adrien Deschryver, was from an aristocratic Flemish family, who migrated to the Congo when he was nine. Theirs was one of many families who settled there once it ceased to be the personal property of King Leopold II and became an official state colony.
Adrien fell in love with an illiterate local woman, who his family refused to accept. With their marriage unrecognised by family, the couple settled in Bukavu to raise their five children.
It was as if I was a family secret that had to be kept out of sight
At the age of 12, the young Christine left Bukavu to attend boarding school in Flanders. At weekends, she went home to her father’s family, who lived locally, where she felt she was barely tolerated. Wanting very much to make a good impression and to be accepted, she did all she could to show she was one of them, she says.
“I learned Dutch, how to do embroidery and even Bruges lacemaking,” she says. “But it was all to no avail: when guests came to the house, it was as if I was a family secret that had to be kept out of sight.”
These experiences meant that from a very early age, Schuler Deschryver was conscious of racial discrimination, and it was clear to her that fighting injustice was what she would do with her life. “I didn’t want to disappoint my father, so I worked hard at school,” she says. “But as soon as I could, I returned to Kivu, where I was born and where I felt – and still feel – that I belong. It’s the place I call home.”
Schuler Deschryver’s professional life started with a job at the Belgian school in Kivu teaching Dutch and English, until the wars started, when she worked for the German development agency GIZ, where she co-ordinated all the projects they funded in eastern Congo.
As a volunteer at the Panzi hospital, she became a close friend and collaborator of Mukwege and supported women who arrived at the hospital suffering atrocious injuries and traumas.
Photo by Paula Allen for V-Day
V-Day connection
Mukwege met American activist and playwright Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, when he addressed the UN in the US. “Denis came back to Bukavu and told me about her,” says Schuler Deschryver. “He said he had told her about me, too, and that we absolutely had to meet each other.”
It was then a natural step for Ensler and Schuler Deschryver to collaborate with survivors in Bukavu and with Unicef to establish City of Joy.
City of Joy is really a story about women’s resilience in the face of trauma
The initiative is funded by Ensler’s V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women, and the women at City of Joy contribute by working to develop the V-World Farm, growing carrots, cassava and other crops, and fishing in the tilapia ponds. The plan is to turn this into a commercially viable farm over the next 10 years, securing the centre’s sustainability.
“City of Joy is not another NGO project based on an ‘aid’ approach,” Schuler Deschryver explains. “From the beginning, we’ve been clear that what we’re doing is developing the capacity of the women who come here so they can take control of their own lives.”
At Flagey this month, Schuler Deschryver and Ensler will lead an event to showcase the centre and its work. “In addition to making City of Joy visible to a Belgian audience, the goal of the event is to show a different side of the DRC. It isn’t all blood and tears,” Schuler Deschryver says.
City of Joy, she continues, “is really a story about resilience – about women’s resilience in the face of trauma. These women are not looking for handouts; what they’re really interested in is having their own autonomy and the power to determine for themselves how to live their lives.”
A Revolutionary New Model: City of Joy, V-World Farm, Congolese Women Rising, 15 September, Flagey, Heilig-Kruisplein, Brussels
