Gav’s latest update from Rwanda. Poor internet is causing the long delays — our apologies.
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July 17 to July 18
When Duncan and I came to Rwanda in April, we really had no idea what to expect and, more importantly, what or how OA was going to contribute positively in the future. All we had was our drive and our intention to absorb and to learn as much as possible, so that OA’s future focus and effectiveness in Rwanda would be streamlined.
We met a lot of people doing different things – all of them incredible, inspiring, and helpful. One of these people is Willa Shalit.
Willa co-founded Fair Winds Trading, which is an amazing company that exports handmade goods from Rwanda into the US and, in the process, employs and empowers disadvantaged women – some of which are HIV/AIDS positive.
Willa introduced us to Emmanuel and Leonce of the Rebero Orphan Center (see previous post), in April, and discussed with us a very interesting camp that was to happen later in July. The camp was described as a one-of-a-kind program for orphaned girls by providing them with strong and positive female role models. This sounded amazing to us, but then we were asked if we wanted to be a part of it!
Since the pilot project was going to be for the girls of the Rebero Center, the boys needed to have something constructive to do during that week – especially as it was to be during their holidays. So, with that in mind, a proposal was given to us to put on an OA-worthy, week-long soccer camp for the boys – but it had to happen in 6 weeks from then.
So, with that in mind, we decided that if we were going to go all the way to Rwanda and back (a year ahead of schedule), then we had to do more than just the camp. We decided to add 2 major tasks to that list: 1) the re-construction of 1 Eco-friendly field, and 2) the distribution of at leas 250 balls to local community/school soccer programs in need.
The young women’s empowerment camp was to be run by a newly created foundation from New York City, called Hope Shines. After 6 weeks of frantic emails and phone calls between Duncan and I and April Rielger, founder of Hope Shines (we didn’t actually book our flights until 2 weeks before the camp started), we finally met in Kigali, at the Mille Collines (Hotel Rwanda for some of you), to discuss how the camps was going to run each day.
April Riegler is an amazing young woman from NYC, who started Hope Shines after an eye-opening trip to Rwanda in the summer of 07. She also has helped establish a very good partnership between Macy’s and Fair Winds Trading, furthering the amazing work that Fair Winds is doing. April had put together a volunteer team of 4 young women from all over the US to help her execute the pilot program.
It was great to finally connect in person, and it became clear that all of the hard work from the previous months to pull this off was going to lead to an amazing camp for some 88 children who don’t have much – nothing compared to kids in Canada and the US.
The night of the 18th, Willa was generous enough to host a dinner at the Serena Hotel, in Kigali, for all of the volunteers who were about to take part in a 7-day camp for the children of the Rebero Orphan Center. We met the other 4 volunteers with Hope Shines: Deana, Kim, Hailey, and Miranda.
Camp started the next day at 9am. Still a few kinks to work out – especially the field that we were going to use for the camp.
Pics to come soon!
Until then,
Gav
