The numbers can be overwhelming, Harvard Kennedy School student Marie-Ange O. Bunga says.

Five million people have died due to the ongoing war in her home country of the Democratic Republic of Congo, supported by the systematic rape of over 500,000 women and their children by vigilante groups.

When Bunga realized that not many people had heard of the ongoing conflict in the Congo, she decided to organize the Congo Initiative at Harvard to raise awareness.

Now, five months later, the initiative has expanded to a group of 10 affiliates representing different schools and related organizations across the campus. But Bunga knows that her part of the fight has only just begun.

“Our hope is that the organization keeps going and stays active,” said L. Ellen Knickmeyer, fellow Congo Initiative member and Kennedy School student. “There’s a threshold when enough people get involved, and things start happening.”

“We need to reach that threshold,” she added.

Bunga said that one of her main priorities through the Congo Initiative is to educate Harvard students about the conflict in the country. The atrocities in the Congo, according to Knickmeyer, have gone mainly unreported by the press.

Knickmeyer had worked as a reporter in West Africa until 2005, and in her five years in the area, she was able to make only one trip to the Congo.

“I saw just horrible starvation because of the war. They were hiding in the bushes, and they couldn’t get treatment,” Knickmeyer recalls. “So much of the killing happens out of sight.”

Since the initiative’s first meeting in January, members have organized several informational events, including a panel discussion and a week-long awareness drive during which they obtained 350 signatures on a petition to Congress.

The initiative seeks to apply pressure to individuals with the political capabilities to enact change, Bunga said. The success of this tactic is reflected in the fact that the situation in Darfur has gained attention as an important issue, and many of the appropriate steps have been taken to confront conflicts in Uganda and Liberia, according to Bunga.

“It’s finally Congo’s turn to get the attention it needs,” Knickmeyer said. “We need to put this problem on the front burner instead of the back burner.”

Bunga and Knickmeyer, as well as many members of the Congo Initiative, will be graduating this year, and the leaders hope to find the next generation of concerned citizens.

Bunga said that she believes the Congo Initiative has made considerable progress since its establishment—the group is already in cooperation with the Harvard Humanitarian Intiative, the Human Rights Center at HKS, and other organizations that work on issues related to Africa awareness.

“We want to have committees working on the advocacy side and working together with students with issues on the field,” Bunga said.

—Staff writer Xi Yu can be reached at xyu@college.harvard.edu.