A foundation built from lived service, cross-border solidarity, and a long discipline of care.
FB2F exists to defend human dignity and widen self-reliance through local solutions. Its public story begins in Rwanda, carries the witness of the Bierlmeier family, and extends into community-led work across East Africa, the Great Lakes Region, and beyond.
Welcome to a haven of hope, compassion, and transformation.
The foundation positions itself as a public home for practical solidarity, long-range stewardship, and community-rooted change.
Friends of Bierlmeier Family Foundation is rooted in a legacy of selfless service and is dedicated to addressing social injustices, promoting human dignity, and creating sustainable solutions that empower communities.
The work begins in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region, but the institutional vision is wider: robust and vibrant communities where people live productive lives with mutual dignity and self-reliance as the destination.
Long-range destination
A world where members of society live productive lives with mutual dignity inside robust, vibrant communities, with self-reliance as the destination.
How the foundation works
To create shared value through sustainable local solutions, in enhancing economic development through design and implementation of a portfolio of projects and entrepreneurship.
The institutional story starts with people, place, and a practical struggle for dignity.
These chapters explain the founder context, the movement born in Kigarama, and the longer public mission now carried by FB2F.
FB2F grows out of a long arc of service rather than a short-cycle philanthropic concept.
Friends of Bierlmeier Family Foundation is the result of 34 years of experience by Jean Baptiste Sengayire in the fight for human dignity and identity, especially for children and vulnerable communities across East Africa, the Great Lakes Region, and other parts of the world.
That long service history gives the foundation a distinct operating posture: it does not approach communities as abstract beneficiaries, but as people whose dignity, relationships, and future must be protected together.
The work was forged in a place marked by pressure, instability, and the need for peace.
Jean Baptiste Sengayire was born in Ishara in 1960 and moved with his family to Kigali in 1968 for security reasons. He currently lives in Kigarama, Kicukiro District, with his family.
Since 1992, the Kigarama area experienced HIV and AIDS pressures linked to transport corridors, and by 1994 it also faced insecurity, war, and the genocide against the Tutsi. FB2F's public story is inseparable from that local context.
A local movement for consolation, self-esteem, and respect of dignity became the soil for the foundation.
In 1991, Jean Baptiste Sengayire established the Mission of the Glorious Cross of St. Francis of Assisi in Kigarama. Its activities were designed around consolation, self-esteem, and respect for dignity for all.
Those efforts changed the area so deeply that it became known as a city of peace, drawing pilgrims from around the world to encounter a culture of peace and life sharing.
Why the foundation carries the Bierlmeier family name.
The name is a memorial and a standard. It honors a family whose integrity, hospitality, and care for children left a defining mark on the work.
Michael Bierlmeier from Hechingen, Germany, was among the first people to come to Rwanda shortly after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Together with his wife Cornelia, he dedicated his life to orphans and vulnerable people from different countries, including Rwanda.
They established Kinder Brauchen Frieden e.V. in Germany, fostered children as their own, and became known in Rwanda for practical, costly solidarity. Cornelia Bierlmeier is still remembered by many as Mama Africa because of her love for children.
The decision to name the foundation after the Bierlmeier family was shaped by their example of integrity, service, hospitality, and sleepless care for the sick and vulnerable. The foundation exists in part so that this witness is remembered and emulated.
A nurse whose ethic of care was practical, sacrificial, and public.
He is remembered as a man of high integrity who spent nights caring for the sick and moved across Germany seeking support for orphans from countries affected by war and poverty.
A maternal witness of cross-border love and protection.
Cornelia's care for children was so visible in Rwanda that many still call her Mama Africa, a name that captures the human warmth behind the foundation's memory of the family.
The name signals memory, gratitude, and a standard of conduct.
Michael died in 2009 and Cornelia in 2021, yet their example continues to guide FB2F's public ethic: integrity, hospitality, and durable concern for those whose futures are fragile.
The value system is meant to shape decisions, not decorate the brand.
FB2F treats these values as operating standards for program design, partnerships, and stewardship of resources.
Self confidence
People and communities should grow in agency, not dependency. FB2F's programs are meant to restore confidence, initiative, and the ability to act productively.
Productive
The foundation prefers work that helps people build durable livelihoods, invest for the future, and move away from a culture of pure consumption.
Honesty
Integrity matters in public communication, partnership selection, and the handling of capital entrusted to the mission.
Consistency
The foundation's story is credible only if its actions remain disciplined over time and if communities can rely on continuity rather than symbolic presence.
FB2F seeks collaborators who add expertise without displacing local ownership.
Partnership is framed as a means of strengthening disadvantaged families, especially widows, single mothers, and young mothers, while protecting local capacity and dignity.
FB2F seeks partnerships and collaborations locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally so that the foundation can access the expertise, best practices, and skills needed to confront the socio-economic challenges facing its members.
By pulling resources together and supporting socio-economic inclusion, the foundation aims to strengthen the capacity of the most disadvantaged families and translate that capacity into long-term financial sustainability.
FB2F starts in East Africa, one of the most socio-economically challenged regions, but it intends for its operations and reception to grow across the African continent and beyond among those who share its commitment to accountability, efficiency, transparency, good governance, leadership, and sustainability.
Strengthen self-help groups, cooperatives, and income-generating activity.
The foundation supports pathways that connect local initiative to resilient enterprise systems and wider markets.
Protect school continuity and value-based learning.
FB2F works to reduce school dropouts, empower youth, and establish learning centers that keep children close to opportunity.
Address family conflict and support reintegration.
The work includes mental health interventions that help young people return to family and community life with restored belonging.
Promote stewardship of natural resources and community climate resilience.
Environmental work is framed as a community responsibility tied to long-term resilience rather than a separate technical lane.
Respond to the root causes of conflict and defend human dignity.
FB2F champions peace, reconciliation, and intercultural dialogue so communities can live productively without segregation or exclusion.
The mission is financed and sustained through disciplined, future-facing stewardship.
FB2F frames capital as a responsibility. The point is not visibility alone, but durable support for a brighter future.
Events and campaigns that support the work in public.
FB2F organizes fundraising activity to support the foundation's programs and keep mission delivery grounded in collective responsibility.
Use capital to build productivity rather than reinforce consumption.
In collaboration with the founding family and the board, the foundation encourages people to be productive and invest for the future.
Welcome trustworthy donors who are serious about a bright future for society.
Donations are invited from people of goodwill whose support strengthens dignity, constructive opportunity, and long-term social sustainability.