Enable 50 Rwandan Mothers to Farm for Profit

The women cooperative in now well functioning, the leadership in position and cultivating and meeting regularly every week. The women who had malnourished kids has formed a cooperative in the help of RVCP team so that the women will be able to stay together during their daily life. they meet regularly as planned for cultivating their field and it is the time for discussing different issues that they are facing in the cooperative and at their families so that they can receive advice from peers. 

We visited them at the field to observe how they are progressing in working together as a cooperative which will enable them to increase their income and living conditions despite the poverty. we found them cultivating and it was in the 11:30AM. they started cultivating arround 7:00AM and they were about to stop and have a rest while discussing and sharing ideas on how to improve themselves and the cooperative in general. They were smiling exchanging this and that and telling different stories from their villages while the cultivation going on. 

It was the time to take a rest while we arrived and we joined them in glasses where they come and sit. their cooperative president were briefing them on how they worked and how she hopes they will be working next days. she imfasized on being on time and thinking on taking care to kids everyday up to 2 years of breastfeeding. she also encouraged them to prepare nutritional meal for the lids and all members of the family in general. One of out team members joined them and added that it is crucial for the kids to have good health in order to prepare them for being good students and good citizens who will be part of their villages development. 

We concluded by thanking them for their daily work and we requested them to help each other by thinking on child and maternal health.

RVCP and GlobeMed have worked closely together for more than five years on the Maternal Health Education Program in Rwanda. Like all sustainable partnerships, there comes a point when the organizations turn the program over to the local community so that they are able to take full ownership. This year, that is what RVCP and GlobeMed at GW have been working toward. We have worked with RVCP to help the women's cooperative go through the application process to become certified and recognized by the government and therefore eligible to receive government support in the following years. 

Along these lines, the government of Rwanda has showed interest in rice harvesting and so have the women of the cooperative. The cooperative has decided that growing rice will be more profitable than harvesting crops such as potatoes and corn, given the working conditions they have. Since this is important to the women, and what they want to spend their time on, GlobeMed has chosen to help them start this project for the first year including renting the land, and purchasing the necessary start up costs. In addition we are trying to set up a meeting between the government agricultural specialist and the cooperative so that the women are fully trained and educated on what it takes to grow a successful rice crop. 

We hope to see the women's cooperative successful in a project that they have chosen to pursue and would love your help in assisting with the start up costs of their vision.