Reflections from Rwanda

My internship with Hands of Mothers (HOM) in Kigali, Rwanda is sadly coming to a close. The time I spent working with three womens cooperatives over the summer was both challenging and fulfilling. I certainly learned a lot about the challenges facing the women we worked with surrounding empowerment and sustainable income generation in the context of poverty and poor health. Despite these challenges, I found the work fulfilling when our HOM team was able to have a positive impact on the cooperatives through our training sessions and group discussions. While each cooperative still has a long way to go in order to become a self-sustaining, viable business, I am happy to say that each cooperative has made some real progress.

Ejo Hazaza is preparing for the grant for their mushroom project and developing a contingency plan in case they are not awarded the grant. Twiyubake has found new shops to sell their sandals in (including at high-end hotels in Kigali), and they are working to develop new cooperative rules and regulations in order to create an accountability system. In addition, the cooperative members rented a new house in Nyabugogo near the central bus station in Kigali where they make and sell sandals. This place is closer to where the cooperative members live than their old workshop, largely solving their transportation issue. Baho has purchased an additional 50 chickens, and is working with the HOM team to find new clients to sell their eggs to at a higher price. In addition, all three cooperatives have begun to sell their products at the monthly Farmers and Artisans Market in Kigali. While the progress made so far is exciting, more work remains to be done, and I am looking forward to hearing about the trials and successes from my colleagues in the coming months.

At my final team meeting we discussed priorities going forward. The HOM team is going to meet with each cooperatives’ leadership team to discuss accountability, organization, and management with a focus on lessons learned thus far and opportunities to improve in the future. In addition, we discussed the idea that each cooperative could purchase a cooperative bus card that members can use when they go out to find new clients or to sell products at a market (money surrounding transportation continues to be an issue). We also talked about the possibility for each cooperative to purchase a cooperative cell phone so clients can easily contact the cooperative for sales. The HOM team is also going to continue its focus on capacity building through trainings and workshops, with a focus on remaining challenges such as adequate record keeping, financial management, and profit/loss statements, in addition to helping each cooperative find more customers for their products.

My goodbye to the HOM team and the women we work with is going to be very difficult. I truly enjoyed my internship, and I’m not quite ready for the experience to be over just yet. Apart from my work, I’m going to miss the friends that I’ve made and the ease of life in Kigali. I feel very thankful to have had this wonderful opportunity, and I hope that one day I will come back to Rwanda.

Update from Rwanda

My time working with women’s cooperatives in Rwanda through my internship with Hands of Mothers (HOM) is going by quite fast. Each cooperative has made significant progress since the beginning, although many challenges (including the issue of dependency addressed in my last post) remain. Here’s an update on each cooperative’s growth and improvement so far:

Ejo Hazaza: Recently, the HOM team helped Ejo Hazaza apply for a grant from the US embassy in Rwanda to start a project to grow and sell oyster mushrooms. In order to build their capacity, we involved them in the grant writing process by asking them questions from the grant form and using their responses to answer the questions. This is an exciting opportunity for Ejo Hazaza because they told us they are interested in switching from jewelry making to growing and selling mushrooms. The jewelry business has not been very profitable for Ejo Hazaza because they are having trouble finding consistent customers. While this is a great opportunity for Ejo Hazaza to start a different project and generate income, it is vitally important that this project is done in a sustainable manner. During our weekly cooperative meeting we stressed to Ejo Hazaza that if they receive the grant money they will be fully in charge of implementing the project. We told them that HOM is here for advice and support, but it is up to the women to take full ownership by organizing and managing the project, delegating tasks and responsibilities, finding customers, and selling the mushrooms on their own. I think this presents a timely opportunity for HOM to fundamentally change the way we interact with Ejo Hazaza in order to break the dependency HOM created and foster sustainability.

Twiyubake: Over the past couple of weeks, Twiyubake has been able to improve the quality of the sandals they make. They were able to accomplish this by implementing a series of trainings where cooperative members more skilled in sandal making helped other members improve their own skills. The HOM team also began to set up visits at high-end hotels in Kigali so Twiyubake cooperative members could meet with the hotels in order to gain permission to sell their sandals in the hotel gift shops. The HOM team set up the appointments for Twiyubake because they do not have access to email. However, the Twiyubake marketing team members are responsible for going to these client visits and presenting their products. Before going on the client visits, we did a series of trainings with Twiyubake in order to teach them about sales techniques, appropriate pricing, and how to market their products. In addition, we went with the Twiyubake marketing team on the first couple of client visits in order to build their confidence; however, going forward Twiyubake will be attending these meetings on their own. The next challenge Twiyubake is working to address is updating their cooperative rules and regulations. As it currently stands, there are no enforced rules surrounding cooperative attendance or achievement of tasks and responsibilities, culminating in a lack of accountability for cooperative members.

Baho: The HOM team has been working with Baho to help them make a profit on their egg sales. Through a cost assessment we determined that Baho was selling their eggs for too little – only 100 francs. In order to cover their costs and make a profit, Baho needs to sell their eggs for 150 francs. We talked with Baho about appropriate pricing and worked with them on how to take more responsibility for cooperative tasks. Baho only began selling eggs in April, and unfortunately HOM had previously been doing tasks for the cooperative such as buying chicken feed and medicine, leading to issues of dependency (similar to the problem we had with Ejo Hazaza). In order to change this relationship, we trained Baho in how to do these tasks on their own and explained that our role is to support the cooperative, not do tasks for them. Since then, the women have been buying supplies and managing the cooperative on their own. The next challenge they face is finding a sustainable market to sell their eggs at a price of 150 francs. So far this has been challenging because the Rwandese customers they already have are used to a price of 100 francs and do not seem willing to pay more. However, we believe we can work to connect them with new clients who are expats that can afford to pay a higher price for the eggs. Baho also told us they are interested in purchasing 50 more chickens in order to increase their egg sales and generate a larger profit.

Dependency or Development?

Our goal as a development organization working with women’s cooperatives in Rwanda is to build their capacity in order to help the cooperatives sustainably grow their businesses. The underlying idea behind capacity building is to help the cooperatives become independent, so they no longer rely on our organization, Hands of Mothers (HOM), for support. Throughout the summer we have implemented a series of trainings and workshops designed to empower the women to create better quality products, find new clients and markets, and become more effective leaders in managing and organizing their cooperative. However, helping to build a sustainable organization from the ground up is particularly challenging when dependency becomes entrenched through an organization’s program design and implementation.

In the past, HOM has sought to help the cooperatives it works with in a way that fostered dependency. Born out of a desire to help, HOM managed cooperative organization and finances, performed tasks for cooperative members when illness or the challenges of poverty prevented the women from selling their products, and focused more on finding customers for the cooperatives’ products than on empowering the women to learn how to find clients themselves. While helping the women in the cooperatives succeed has always been the ultimate goal, the way this goal has been pursued poorly misaligned with the long term goal of sustainability.

As the summer progressed, this mismatch between what our HOM team wanted to accomplish and how HOM had been conducting its relationship with the cooperatives in the past became more and more apparent. For example, Ejo Hazaza (the cooperative that makes jewelry) told us they were interested in switching gears in order to become an agricultural cooperative. Their idea was to raise and sell goats and cultivate mushrooms. They told us their plan at our weekly meeting, and we told them this sounded like an interesting idea and that we were on board to help them accomplish their goal.

 The following week when we returned for our next discussion, they asked us when we were going to buy them the goats. Naturally, we were quite confused, as we never told the cooperative we would buy goats for them. However, because HOM routinely did things for the cooperative in the past, the women thought that when we said we would help them with their idea that this meant we would buy the goats for them. We told the women this was not the case, and we emphasized how going forward the relationship between HOM and Ejo Hazaza would be different – we would no longer do tasks for the cooperative. Rather, we told them our role was to empower them to take ownership of projects and tasks themselves.

At first we found the misunderstanding about the goats startling! However, it is truly not all that surprising given how HOM interacted with the cooperative in the past. As the issue of dependency has become more apparent to us, we have doubled down on our efforts to build the cooperatives’ capacity going forward.

Women’s Empowerment and Community Development Challenges in Rwanda

This summer I am interning with an organization called Hands of Mothers in Kigali, Rwanda. We work with women’s cooperatives on helping to build their capacity with the goal of each cooperative becoming a sustainable, independent, and viable business that can generate income for the cooperative members and their families. Hands of Mothers works with three cooperatives: Ejo Hazaza makes beaded jewelry, Twiyubake makes handcrafted leather sandals, and Baho raises kuroiler hens and sells their eggs.

Each cooperative is based on the idea of empowering women through income generation, while providing members with a network of support and teamwork. Premised upon the idea of poverty alleviation through economic empowerment, Hands of Mothers seeks to build the capacity of each cooperative in order to become self-sustaining. Currently, all three cooperatives rely on support from Hands of Mothers and grant funds for their operation, and each faces unique challenges on the path towards sustainability and growth.

Through group discussions and interviews with cooperative members, the Hands of Mothers team spent the first couple of weeks learning about the needs and challenges of each cooperative. None of the cooperative members speak English, so our discussion was translated through our Kinyarwanda speaking staff. Being unable to communicate directly with cooperative members certainly made connecting with them challenging, and taking time for translation made our discussions quite slow. Nuances are often lost in translation, and it frequently took a couple of tries to successfully exchange ideas. This experience further developed my own patience, and it served as a unique opportunity to begin to understand the challenges our participants faced as well as challenges surrounding empowerment within the wider development context.

 All of the members in each cooperative are living with HIV/AIDS, so difficulties surrounding health were routinely and unsurprisingly a common focus of our discussions. However, a deeper dive on this topic revealed to us that health challenges extended beyond the obvious issues surrounding sickness and access to medicine. Our group discussions frequently focused on the link between poor health and transportation problems. Most of our participants cannot afford to pay for a bus or taxi to get to the cooperative for work. Many have to walk far distances – some walk 2-3 hours. For a healthy person this would very difficult; for people living with HIV/AIDS, their poor health compounds the exhausting effects of walking so far.

During our group discussions, participants also expressed to us that members frequently do not show up for work. For some it is the issue of transportation. However, for others it seemed to be a lack of motivation and lack of commitment to their work stemming from the reality that as of now, the cooperatives are not generating enough income to be sustainable or to pay their members an adequate salary to survive on. Our goal as an organization is to build the cooperatives’ capacity so they can generate income and lift themselves out of poverty. However, it is difficult to instill a sense of empowerment into a cooperative that is currently unsuccessful.

While each cooperative faced similar challenges surrounding health issues and lack of success, our team found that each group was at very different stages in their own development. Ejo Hazaza was having trouble marketing and selling their jewelry, Twiyubake was not making high quality sandals or selling in enough places, and Baho was not making a profit on their egg sales. Addressing each cooperatives’ needs while working to build their capacity is going to be a challenge for us going forward. For example, it may be a simple fix to contact customers and find new markets for Ejo Hazaza or Twiyubake to sell their products in. However, if we find markets and customers for them, it does not build their capacity.

Going forward, our idea is to provide a series of trainings to address some of these issues. For example, we plan to teach members how to find new markets on their own. However, we realize this will not be simple. If some members cannot pay for transportation to get to the cooperative to work, it will be difficult for them to pay for transportation to explore new markets and connect with clients after our trainings are complete. This is just one small example in a myriad of challenges we found. However, to me it demonstrates the complexity of implementing a development program when participants are constrained by the realities of poverty and poor health. Nevertheless, I am optimistic about the opportunity to make progress this summer, and I am looking forward to developing solutions that meet the needs of our participants by focusing on empowerment and finding ways for cooperative members to successfully help themselves.