DRC: Doing Her Part to Help Congolese Women

“Rwandan and Congolese rebels gang-raped nearly 200 women and some baby boys over four days within miles of a U.N. peacekeepers' base in an eastern Congo mining district,” wrote Michelle Faul of the Associated Press in an August 23, 2010 article. She cites an American aid worker and a Congolese doctor as her sources.

This is the kind of story many readers skip because it's just too horrific to comprehend way over here on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Many of us would prefer to close our eyes and ears to these atrocities, figuring there's nothing we can do anyway.

Four years ago, when Monica Ianelli read a piece in O, The Oprah Magazine about what was happening to women in the Congo and what an American woman named Lisa Shannon was doing about it, she didn't look away. She couldn't.

“She went on a solo run to raise money,” Ianelli said of Shannon in our recent interview. “I was compelled to get involved as well.”

Ianelli began by sponsoring a Congolese woman through Women for Women International and was subsequently contacted to see if she'd like to get involved in organizing a New York City chapter of Run for Congo Women. She was and has since been the primary organizer of the New York event; this year it will be held on September 25 and is one of 14 runs around the United States and Europe in 2010.

“Not everybody has to look,” Ianelli said. “Not everybody has to feel guilty that they can't do anything about it. Not everybody has to be in the race. They can donate the bagels. For us to be able to put on the run, it would be helpful to have money for those kinds of things.”

For Ianelli, this is more than just a random charitable deed. Her fiancé, Joe, was among those killed in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and since then she has been determined to give back because so much support was given to her during that time.

“I feel some connection with genocide because of what I went through in some weird personal way,” she said. “I think 9/11 was a huge factor, well, actually is the reason why I got involved [in the Run for Congo Women]. It's not necessarily what propels me to stay involved though.”

Ianelli, a resident of Hoboken, N.J., is wired to help people. In 2003 she began working towards a B.S. in psychology and art therapy at The New School and just last year she earned her M.S. in clinical social work at Columbia. She is currently employed as a mental health clinician, providing individual and group counseling to the mentally ill population.

“That change was sparked by 9/11,” she said.

With the recent horrors happening in the Congo, Ianelli sent out an email with the link to the article and this opening – “This is why you will continue to get annoying emails from me about Run/Walk for Congo Women.” It went on to say this, “We are sending a simple message: Congolese lives matter. The lives of Congolese women are significant. The lives of Congolese children are precious. They have waited far too long. They are worth our effort. We are running to help.”

According to the aforementioned AP story, Will F. Cragin of the International Medical Corps said, “Many women said they were raped in their homes in front of their children and husbands, and many said they were raped repeatedly by three to six men.” There were also boys – babies – who were raped, aged one month, six months, a year and 18 months.

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Of course, even before this latest escalation, the numbers were grim. The Run for Congo Women Web site says 5.4 million people have died there since 1998 due to the war.

“The death toll is the equivalent of an Asian Tsunami every 6.5 months,” the site says. “A September 11 every 2.5 days. And nearly half of the deaths in the Congo are of children under the age of five.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the Congo last year. The book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is a call to arms to spread the word about what is happening to women around the globe and to get involved; it just came out in paperback. This kind of focus on the region in recent years has brought more media attention to it and it has helped with fundraising.

“This is all about raising awareness,” Ianelli said.

The rest will follow. Let's pay attention long enough to do something.