The Truth Told Project

Untold stories of the people bearing the brunt of conflict.

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Most of the people here are farmers and work large plots of land to feed their family and sell at the market. Today we arrived at a COPERMA member’s field to find that someone has stolen part of the potato harvest. They have taken the food and potential income from the community. Hours from Butembo, the team scrambles to get the rest of the harvest out of the ground before nightfall.
We walked this path after a day of incredibly difficult interviews. It had taken COPERMA two weeks to come up with the gas money to reach this remote village about 3.5 hours away from Butembo. In the end, one of the staff members had to borrow gas money from friends. We came here because there were over 14 girls who had been raped. We could not even make it through all the interviews on this day. As the girls came in they kept getting younger and younger. 15, 14, 13.
Looking out the door of our mud hut “interview room”. We went to this village expecting to meet with 10 women and their children. By the time we arrived, there were at least double that number waiting. As we spent the afternoon interviewing, the line at the door kept growing. These women have no access to resources to care for themselves and their children. They have no recourse for justice. It is very important to all of them that we listen to their story, write it down, and document it for the outside world to see. In fact they demand this and wait in line for hours for their turn. We struggle to meet with everyone before nightfall because this area becomes the soldier’s playground after dark.

Sarah Fretwell

Award-winning photographer Sarah Fretwell’s work focuses on the lives of citizens in current and post conflict countries. Her goal i…

Topics
Social Justice
Sub Topics
Conflict Conflict Zones Congo
Regions
Africa Democratic Republic of Congo
Conflict Zones

About The Truth Told Project

The Truth Told Project was born in December of 2010 when award-winning photographer Sarah Fretwell ventured into the war-torn mineral rich region of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Her time there was spent in rural villages and bush country ravaged by the ongoing battle for access to minerals and land.For fifty days, she gathered the untold stories of the people bearing the brunt of the conflict. The Project amplifies the voices of women, girls, and men of the DRC who have been silenced by the war, their government, and corruption

The goal of the project is to illuminate the daily realities of life in the DR Congo, discuss the key players in the conflict, and the rampant sexual violence. It will discuss the immense prospect the land and people hold for the future, if only they can have the support of the international community.

As The Truth Told Project works to educate viewers by sharing the personal stories of sexual violence survivors from the ongoing resource war in The Democratic Republic of Congo, the project has truly spread world wide. A conservative estimate of the project reach last year based on Google Analytics is that the project has reached more than 400,000 viewers.

That number is truly more than I could have ever imagined when I journeyed to North Kivu in December of 2010. To hear more about my personal journey in following my passion through the evolution of this project, please watch my talk on Unreasonable Activism – A Journey into the Heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo at TEDxSkidRow that was presented at TEDxSkidRow in Los Angeles this past September. A few of the many other project highlights in 2013 were:partnering with STAND (The Student Led Movement to End Mass Atrocities) to bring The Truth Told Project to universities across the United States presenting at TOMS shoes headquarters speaking at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management being a featured speaker at the Palm Springs Photo Festival speaking at TEDx SkidRow being a featured speaker at University of Southern California.

While many good things have been happening for the project, the situation in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continues to remain unstable. While the M23 rebel group surrendered, there are still an estimated 29 armed groups still fighting in the DRC. I personally receive numerous funding requests from COPERMA (the non profit I worked with in DRC) throughout the year in desperate need of money to reach the increasing number of young survivors in remote villages. As the need for their services continues to increase, COPERMA struggles to find the funding to reach survivors (many of them teen girls) to offer them post trauma care and support.

This year I was recruited to work for the United Nations Headquarters in New York during the general debates. For six weeks I spent my time attending high level meetings, photographing presidents and dignitaries from around the world – including Barack Obama -, and most importantly reaching out to as many high level ministers and representatives as I could to share the personal messages the girls and women DRC have shared with me. Deepest thanks to everyone who has donated to the project this past year and for your continued support through donating services, time, and funding.