Amani Matabaro Tom is the Founding Director of Action Kivu and the co-founder and Executive Director of ABFEC (Action for the Welfare of Women and Children in Congo), a Congolese grassroots organization for which Action Kivu, a U.S. based nonprofit organization, raises awareness and funds to provide the resources for ABFEC’s community-based initiatives that foster equality for conflict-affected women and children in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Tom works every day to advance human rights, good governance and justice in his home country and his work has put him at high risks on a daily basis.
Tom’s several years experience working with National and International Humanitarian Organizations and the UN has exposed him to the misery that successive and ongoing wars have created in his home country. Tom Amani strongly believes in the power of education, and this is why he founded the Congo Peace School Program, which mainly aims at providing mostly war-affected children with quality education based on peace and active nonviolence to ensure the children stay out of local militias and mines and get prepared for transformational leadership in the DRC. The Peace School program is made possible by support of the Dillon Henry Foundation:
Peace and nonviolence-oriented education is a powerful weapon to prevent civil and human rights violations, mass atrocities and fight genocide.
Tom, 46, married and father of 6, has been working tirelessly to address the issues human and civil rights are confronted with in the Eastern Congo war torn region. Tom is an educator who graduated from the Bukavu Higher Institute of Education in English and African Culture, and has worked with several humanitarian and human rights organizations on the ground in the African Great Lakes region. These include TAG & Democracy International Countering Trafficking in Persons Project, the National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago, Jewish World Watch, the International Rescue Committee, Johns Hopkins, the Enough Project Center for American Progress, and the UN Multinational Peacekeeping Forces in the Congo.
Tom comes with a diversified range of academic trainings from the University of Rhode Island Centre for Peace and Nonviolence in Kingian Nonviolence, Johns Hopkins University with focus on Health Emergencies in Large Populations, the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative focusing on National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership. Tom is a co-author of several articles, such as and .
Learn more about Amani's work at .