CELEBRATION! Going home is always so bittersweet. I love these places and I love the people. I do feel very good, however, about the progress and impact I have found on this trip, which is the reason why I come each year. It is my job to make sure that your dollars are being used …
Month: June 2017
One Last Project Visit!
Today we drove three hours from Kampala to Kiboga in central Uganda where we completed our month long marathon to visit our projects. I feel like I really short-changed our Women’s Vegetable Cooperative, because I have a terrible cold and was not feeling well enough to engage as fully as I normally like to do. …
Slowly But Significantly…
Every time we visit our Youth With Physical Disabilities Entrepreneurs Project, I am overwhelmed with the love amongst this group and reminded that happiness can be and should be simple. The groups are comprised of both young people with disabilities and caretakers of youth with disabilities. They are split into two groups of mushroom farmers, …
Arriving at the Rice Farmers Processing Factory this morning made my heart smile. More than 150 farmers had already arrived and were seated in rows of plastic chairs under an enormous tree. On two side were canopies and chairs set up, which is where sat down with our partners from Development Monitors, the cooperative board …
Increase In Income!
Today has been a very long day and it is late, so I just want to briefly talk about three members of the Rice Farmers Cooperative-Lira who have had great success since joining the cooperative and the Village Savings and Loans groups. We spent the day in Alebtong in Northern Uganda. This is an area …
Bricks and Roasted Meat
We spent the day with two Village Savings and Loans groups, deep in the villages where our honey farmers live. Both groups welcomed us with the most beautiful singing and dancing. Because we work all over Rwanda and Uganda, we have the chance to see many different styles of dance and music. Today there was …
Bees, Bees and More Bees!
Today was Day 1 of visiting our Honey Farmers Cooperative. Northern Uganda is HOT, but incredibly beautiful. The villages where our farmers live are so peaceful and picturesque, although they were once the sites of horrific violence with the Lord’s Resistance Army and then deserted, left to become forest again. In the past several years …
Last day in Rwanda ends on a very positive note!
Our first project in Rwanda was in Bugasera District in 2008 and we have been working there ever since. Being there always feels like home. We have two projects Bugasera that we visited today. Mayange Community Development Organization (MCDO) is set up like our other Village Savings and Loans groups, except there are a few …
The Strength of the Country
What an incredible day! Today we drove two hours from Kigali to a new program that is part of the Mother/Child Development Project. It is a Revolving Fund (Microloans) group of 128 women deep in the mountains of Rwanda about 25 miles from one of the borders with Uganda. The project is only two months …