Our income-generating programs include:

The Rwanda Basket Co.

- an income-generating program that employs over 2000 rural women by providing a market for their beautifully handcrafted baskets.  Basket weaving has been a long standing tradition in Rwanda but has not always provided a stable income.  This program works to do provide a regular market while also equipping the women with savings accounts, opportunities for investments, reconciliation training and leadership opportunities.

The Urunana Pineapple Plantation

- benefits 82 reconciled rape victims and genocide perpetrators’ wives.  These women work together planting, fertilizing, weeding and harvesting the pineapples to bring to local Rwandan markets. This plantation has become an example of reconciliation in the community where victims and perpetrator’s families come together to work and gain income to improve their families’ lives.

The Ambassadors Cassava Plantation

– Rwanda Partners has a network of 120 reconciled genocide survivors, perpetrators and lay church leaders who have received training in reconciliation and are now taking what they have learned to their communities and churches. This plantation provides opportunities for them to put their reconciliation into practice and also provide them with much-needed income as they work together to plant, harvest and sell their cassava crop to the local market.

Gashora Orphans Cassava Plantation

– this program supports 10 orphan heads of households by providing an opportunity for them to come together and farm 5 acres of land.  Cassava will be planted and in September of every year the orphans will harvest the cassava to feed their families and sell in the local market.  This extra income will help them support their families with necessities such as food, clothing, education and healthcare.

The Gashora Orphans Sewing Program

– trains and equips 15 vulnerable youth in Gashora with sewing skills.  These orphan heads of households are 16-24 years old and have become responsible for their siblings.  They have sacrificed their own education to care for their families by working day labor farming jobs.  This program provides them with vocational training in sewing that will equip them to have regular income and access to an international market after they complete the program.

The Wirira Widows Chicken/Egg/Corn Farm

– Wirira means “don’t cry” in Kinyarwanda.  Wirira Widow’s Cooperative is comprised of 56 genocide widows, most of them rape victims, who are benefiting from a chicken/egg/corn farm project that is led by Rwanda Partners’ staff member, Odette Murekatete.  The group meets regularly for prayer, counseling, encouragement, and support. The project includes a chicken farm for 1000 chickens and 3 acres of corn and cassava that the women grind and sell as flour in local markets.  This support system and income-generating opportunity has proved to be a lifeline in many of these traumatized women’s lives. 

Vocational Sewing Program

– Rwanda Partners has teamed up with two vocational training schools in Rwanda to provide a market to 25 unemployed young adults.  This program works to employ those who have been formally trained at a vocational school in Kigali but have not yet found work.  This program not only employs young adults with needed jobs but it supports the school in their mission to educate underprivileged genocide victims.