Day 12: A Visit With Dear Friends and One More Women’s Group

Written by: Jenn O’Neill

On our last full day here in Rwanda, we traveled east out of Kigali and over the hills to visit our dear friends in Gasarabwayi. Our team has some strong roots here and it is a visit I have personally been really looking forward to. One Church has been visiting this village for over a decade! Once a very hard to reach poor village, they are now considered the most advanced village for Africa Hope Initiatives. There were warm smiles, familiarity and lots of hugs going around.

During our visit we got an update about the church as well as the women’s cooperative. The church building is seeing some wear and tear and Pastor Emmanuel told us it needs roof and floor repairs. Bishop also encouraged church leaders to consider building a preschool. Meantime, the women’s cooperative appointed a new president in January. Since Heidi visited last year, the group was able to make up the $300 lost from the savings bonus given in 2020. It was lost when some women who had loans left the village during the pandemic. We encouraged the group to keep working hard and we look forward to continuing our partnership with them.

Before we drove back to Kigali, we had one more women’s group to visit in Kabuga. This community rents a church space for a 2 hour Sunday service. Another community rents the afternoon time. The women’s cooperative decided to start with 10 members and we heard from each of them about their businesses. We can already tell this is a strong group of women! They were very excited to have us visit and Bishop shared the great news that we are giving them a savings bonus!

We wish we could have stayed longer but it was time to head back to Kigali to share a final dinner with our Rwandan team, share our accomplishments and say our farewells until next year. We are so grateful for each one of them. We could never do the work we do without their strong support and love. Thank you so much friends! We will miss you all.