Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re more aware than ever of the critical role that essential businesses—and the entrepreneurs running them—play. Across the HOPE network, men and women use their businesses to provide necessary goods and services, and as they do, they not only provide for their own families but often become known as leaders in their church and community. Continue Reading…
Archives For Rwanda
HOPE Intl
HOPE Intl
Stories we loveHOPE Intl
HOPE Intl
Staff / Travels Stories we loveHOPE Intl
HOPE Intl
Staff / Travelsby Robert Gonza, Quality Assurance Officer (HOPE Rwanda)
When I started working with HOPE Rwanda, I didn’t know if I believed in savings groups.
My job in quality assurance includes interacting with our field partner staff, training them about quality assurance processes like reporting documents, attending monthly mentoring meetings, and visiting and encouraging saving groups. I enjoyed my job and my team, but I was not always very sure how savings groups were transforming people’s lives.
Almost anyone you ask at HOPE Rwanda will be quick to share the statistics of how the saving groups are transforming lives—how many families we serve, how much they’ve saved, the number of cows, goats, and pigs they’ve purchased with their savings. Three years later, I now myself could share all these things. And I thought that the numbers were the most important things about these savings groups.
But I was wrong. They are about way more than just the savings, the number of loans, or those who attended the meeting—or pigs or cows. Continue Reading…
Isaac Barnes
Isaac Barnes
NewsDried apricot, raspberry, brown sugar. No, these aren’t candle scents; they’re the delicate flavors of specialty coffees sourced from the highlands of Burundi and Rwanda. In my very caffeinated opinion, coffees from these two hilly countries in East Africa are among the world’s most delicious, and yes, they even fight poverty. Continue Reading…
HOPE Intl
HOPE Intl
Photos / Media Stories we loveSarah Ann Schultz
Sarah Ann Schultz
Staff / TravelsIf American people see that kid, they will think he’s really poor.”
My Rwandan colleague’s words jerked me out of my reverie.
Bumping along a rural Rwandan road, my eyes tried to absorb it all—the undulating hills, the downy clouds that dotted the wide-open sky, the goats and chickens. My eyes caught on a little boy running in front of a row of houses.
The little boy wore only a pair of shabby shorts that appeared to have once been khaki-colored. Reddish dust covered his body from his cheeks to his feet. I noticed that he was barefoot. Continue Reading…