Annual Report 2023: What the Numbers Say
Our 2023 Annual Report is published. Beyond the statistics — 2,500 lives touched, 200 youth reached, 1,500 households supported — we reflect on what the numbers mean and where we fell short.
Battiston Lyonga
Founder & Executive Director
The 2023 Annual Report of the Battiston Lyonga Foundation is now available. The headline numbers are encouraging: 2,500 lives touched across all programmes, 200 young people reached through Youth Development, 1,500 households supported through Hunger Alleviation, and 800 patients seen through Rural Healthcare outreach.
But numbers, as we have always said, are not the story. They are the beginning of the story.
In this letter, I want to share what the numbers mean — and, more importantly, what they do not tell you.
“Honest reporting — including our failures — is not a weakness. It is the foundation of the trust that makes long-term impact possible.”
The 200 young people reached through Youth Development represent our third consecutive year of growth. But they also represent a waiting list of 140 young people we could not accommodate. Our programme capacity is constrained by funding, by the availability of trained mentors, and by the physical spaces we can access. We are working to address all three — but I want to be honest that we are not yet where we need to be.
"Honest reporting — including our failures — is not a weakness," I wrote in the report's introduction. "It is the foundation of the trust that makes long-term impact possible."
The 1,500 households supported through Hunger Alleviation is a number we are proud of. But it sits alongside a harder number: our assessment suggests that food insecurity in our target communities affects approximately 4,200 households. We are reaching 36% of the need. That is meaningful. It is also insufficient.
The Rural Healthcare programme saw 800 patients in 2023 — but our community health volunteers identified an additional 300 cases that required follow-up care we were not resourced to provide. We referred those cases to district health facilities. We do not know how many of those referrals were acted upon.
These are the numbers that keep me up at night. Not because they represent failure — but because they represent the gap between what we are doing and what is needed. Closing that gap requires more resources, more partners, and more of the sustained commitment that our donors and volunteers have shown.
The full 2023 Annual Report is available on our website. I encourage you to read it — not just the highlights, but the sections on what we learned, what we got wrong, and what we are changing as a result.
