OLPCorps UCSD Congo Members

Meet the Team members. Espoir Kyubwa, a graduate student in bioengineering program at University of California, San Diego. Mr. Kyubwa has lived and left Democratic Republic of Congo at age of 10 and speaks the local language of Swahili. He has served as the President of the National Society of Black Engineers at the University of Califorinia San Diego and has worked with elementary school children in science outreach activities. He has also worked with homeless youth at the San Diego Community Service Center, in the emergency homeless shelter. Espoir is the Team leader for the OLPCorps_University of California San Diego, Democratic Republic of congo. Morgan Smith, a senior in the nursing program at the Loyola University and president of a group called Invisible Conflicts. In her organization, Ms. Smith has helped raise funding for children’s education in Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo. She will be graduating this year, and applying to graduate programs this year. She has also worked as a nurse in South Africa, facilitating activities for ophan children and becaming familier with the public and private health care of South Africa. She has developed relationships with NGO organization all across Africa for the past three as the co-founder of Invisible Conflicts at the Loyola University. Narugano Masumbuko is a Canadian citizen of Congolese origin who is currently completing his fourth year in science chemistry education at the Department of Education at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. Mr. Musumbuko is well equipped to take on the challenge of using technology to empower students in rural village to improve their community. In addition to his training in the pedagogic and scientific field, Mr. Masumbuko has ten years of experience teaching young people both of primary and secondary levels in the rural village of Uvira of Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Burundi, Republic of Rwanda, and in Canada. In particular, Mr. Masumbuko has utilized technology in scientific animation to teach five to twelve years old children science and real life practices at the Council of loisir scientifique de l'Estrie in Sherbrooke. Originally from the Great Lakes region of Africa and specifically from Uvira area, Mr. Masumbuko is an expert in the social and cultural customs of Uvira, the neighboring regions and countries. He understands the realities of living in the Uvira and is well connected with some of the institutions in the Uvira area. As a multilingual, Mr. Masumbuko is fluent in the local languages that are spoken there such as kifuliiru, Kirundi, Kinyarwanda, and Kiswahili. Mr. Masumbuko is therefore a vital member of the team who can help the other members adapt this project to the needs of this environment and of those young children living there.