Help Vulnerable Women Become Leaders of Change

We’re busy moving forward with our high-engagement incubator, helping women at the grassroots level develop and sustain their own micro-NGOs.

Here’s a snapshot about some of the exciting new developments happening on the ground in Rwanda:

• Let Us Build Ourselves, a women’s literacy venture, has developed a sister program tutoring street children and training them in traditional Rwandan dance.  Their dance program performs at local weddings and other events to support the cost of the literacy program. The dance team has become so skilled that they recently won a district-wide award. At the celebration for this award, 118 people also received free HIV tests.

• Education for Young Girls, which initially tackled the problem of ensuring girls stay in school by building safe latrines and showers for them to use during their menstrual cycles, are now utilizing the skills they learned through our Academy for Conscious Change to design new approaches to tackling teenage prostitution.

• Some of our water ventures, including Hard Workers and Have a Good Life are experiencing new difficulty because of climate change. The rains in Rwanda have been unusually scarce this year and water sources are drying up. Hard Workers’ rain collection cisterns have too frequently run dry, and the city has turned off the supply to Have a Good Life for days at a time. These teams are in the process of problem solving and trying to raise money for additional cisterns so that women don’t have to go back to dirty streams during dry spells.

• In Rwinkwavu, in Eastern Rwanda, our 70- vulnerable high school girls who took part in the Girls Academy training last November are exceeding our greatest expectations with their passion, commitment and fearlessness. Although their projects were initially intended to take place as a one-time events during their holiday school break, the girls are motivated to develop long-term programs creating change in their communities as well as opportunities for themselves to grow as leaders.  You can read more about them on their own Global Giving page here. 

THE NEXT ACADEMY FOR CONSCIOUS CHANGE

We anticipate initiating our next Academy for Conscious Change with a cohort of venture teams focused on water issues in October.  Stay tuned for more. 

UGANDA EXPANSION

This past January, Global Grassroots launched its first geographical expansion from Rwanda into Northen Uganda to target women survivors of the reign of terror of the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Our first cohort of 40 change agents representing eight venture teams are now in the process of their venture development work.  Our newest staff from Uganda, Colombus Onoo and Celine Auma, traveled this month to Kigali to train with our Rwanda office, led by Senior Program Officer, Gyslaine Uwitonze and Program Assistant, Josiane Isingizwe. Their training included exposure to our existing venture teams and the delicate methodology we use to guide venture development and inspire self-sufficiency without imposing our own ideas.  We look forward to the opportunity for our venture teams in Uganda having the opportunity to exchange with our Rwandan organizations too.   

OUR GRATITUDE

We remain deeply grateful for your support, as our ability to continue to support the growth and impact of these teams would not be possible without you. We are excited about our expansion into Uganda, our adaptation of our work for a younger audience of vulnerable girls and our upcoming Academy for Conscious Change focused on water issues.  We hope you will continue to contribute to our work, so that we may help vulnerable women become leading change agents.