Trauma Healing and Reconciliation in Rwanda

When the Accelerator campaign was over at midnight eastern time last night, the Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities Center’s project, Trauma Healing and Reconciliation in Rwanda, passed. Fifty-six unique donors donated a total of $5,376. This means that the HROC Center is now a partner with GlobalGiving and can continue to raise tax deductible (US) and gift aid (UK) donations for its activities.

Many thanks to those 56 donors including the 5 who donated twice. Among those donors there were 16 people whom I did not know. These necessary donors were recruited by donors reaching out to their family and friends via email and Facebook.

I must admit that, after the bonus day when we had only collected 38% of the $5,000 needed, I was doubtful that we would succeed. When we raised $1000 on Monday, I became a little more optimistic. On Tuesday we received $1279 and I became fairly confident that we would succeed. I woke up twice during the night to see if we had reached our goal. The second time I saw that we had received $820 which put us over the top and I slept soundly until the morning (which in Kenya is midnight eastern time.)

There were 674 organizations participating in this Accelerator. Only 63 or 9.3% succeeded. We were listed as number 56 on the list of 674 organizations. I am on a Facebook group of people participating in the Accelerator and there was great concern that the coronavirus epidemic was making fundraising difficult. GlobalGiving acknowledged that this was true as the total donated this year to all the organizations ($610,249) was almost $300,000 less than the similar campaign last year in March. In order to succeed we overcame a major obstacle.

One of the requirements for being a partner with GlobalGiving is that at least once every three months the HROC Center will need to send a report on their activities. Another benefit is that GlobalGiving itself will place our project on its webpage so that people unknown to us or the work can contribute. At times they may even promote our organization. Over time this will lead to an expanded audience for supporting the HROC Center and Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities.