We are excited about what God is doing here in Kigali, Rwanda. We’ve been working with vulnerable women in one of the communities here now for a year. The first several months seemed pretty rocky at times. The group began with 20 women starting a savings and credit group, but it took some time for them to trust each other. We eventually moved our weekly meetings to the leader Immacule’s house which seemed to create a safe place and a place for them to start building trust with each other.
They finished their first 6 months of savings right before Christmas and many of the women returned in January to begin the second round of savings, this time for a year. We are so proud of them for sticking through with this group even when it seems too difficult or like they aren’t able to scrape together the money to save. Many of them hope to use their savings to build their capital and to start a small business. Which brings me to the next exciting news; last week they began a two-month-long entrepreneurship training. The hopeful outcome of this training is that they will learn how to be better business women and to start a small business together.
In addition to these things we also have weekly Bible studies with them and visit them in their homes to build relationships with them. This is still difficult since our Kinyarwanda is still very rusty, but we are thankful for Immacule who leads this group fearlessly and translates for us. We are currently working on a pre-evaluation with the women as well with questions about their health, finances, identity, etc to learn their mindsets on these topics now compared with the end of the year when we will do a post-evaluation and compare the two.
We are thankful for this opportunity to live life with these amazing women and we are excited to learn from and grow with them.
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