Abstract

This chapter reflects on the non-existence of meaningful service user consultation in the author’s home country, Congo Brazzaville. He offers an explanation for and critique of this situation. He gives an account of the activity of Couleurs Congolaises, a non-governmental organisation he established with some fellow university students in 2007, through which they tried to raise social consciousness and awareness among some of the most disenfranchised people in the country. They did this so that all Congolese citizens might have not only an understanding of their rights as human beings and as citizens, but also knowledge of how to act to assert those rights.