OUR STORY
I travelled to Rwanda in March 2010 on a volunteer assignment with Accounting for International Development (AfID).I was working with Dufatanye Inshuti z’Abana (DIZA), Friends of the Children Association, a non-profit organisation based in Rwamagana in eastern Rwanda. DIZA’s mission is to contribute to the well-being of orphaned and vulnerable children and the community of Rwamagana. I am an accountant and worked to help DIZA put financial policies and procedures in place to bring transparency and efficiency to their finance function. I love Rwanda, it is an amazing and beautiful country and the people are so friendly.
After returning to Ireland, I wanted to continue to help DIZA so I to set up Rwamagana School Children's Fund (RSCF) here in Ireland. RSCF was setup to provide funding for the provision of education and its associated costs to orphaned and vulnerable children in Rwanda. Rwamagana School Children's Fund (RSCF) CHY 20665 Irl www.rscfireland.org
Our main objective is the relief of poverty and the advancement of education, by the sponsorship of Rwandan school children. Depending on the child’s circumstances, this sponsorship may cover just the school’s fees or it may cover everything from school fees, transport to and from school, school equipment which includes school books, medical insurance, uniforms, and other necessary clothing and food costs when they are at home.
The aim of our charity is to do the following:
- To improve the health and well-being of the children through regular meals
- To improve the quality of life that these children have
- To increase, through the sponsorship of education, the chances of the children completing the first and second levels of school and possibly going on to third level
- To provide micro loans to the mothers (and possible, other women in the community) of the students that we sponsor so that they can start a small business that will increase the household income thus improving the lives of these children’s families. This will also help the child's wider community. It is envisaged that these loans would be administered by our trustworthy grassroots partner charity, DIZA.
The objectives of our micro financing project are as follows:
OBJECTIVES
- Business objective will be to overcome poverty, or one or more problems (such as education, health, technology access, and the environment) which threaten people and society; not profit maximization
- Financial and economic sustainability
- If applicable, investors get back their investment amount only. No dividend is given beyond the invested money
- When the investment amount is paid back, organisation profit stays with the organisation for expansion and improvement
- Environmentally conscious workforce gets markets with better working conditions
- ...do it with joy :-)
Along with DIZA, we have identified a group of thirty women to form our first micro finance group. Our intention is to validate their business plans, to put in place training for these women, to give constant mentoring support during the life of the loans, to introduce these women to savings and the benefits and planning opportunities that can come from regularly saving. DIZA has held a couple of meetings with this group and the ladies have selected a fantastic Kinyarwanda (local Rwandan language) name for the group: ABANYAMUGISHA MICROFINANCE, (Abanyamugisha = The Blessed, abanya – umugisha which translates to people who feel blessed).
We want to EMPOWER the women entrepreneurs of Rwanda and help them to be in a position to provide for their families. We know how the ripple effect of this work will have a positive impact on the whole community of these women through creating local employment opportunities & money earned is spent in the local community. We want to assist these women to realise their entrepreneurial dreams & to become better ROLE MODELS for their children and community!
We take the view that each person that will donate to this project will be part of this movement to empower these women and hopefully others in the future. So get on board with us!
Our pages on Facebook are:
https://www.facebook.com/MicrofinanceRwamagana/
https://www.facebook.com/RwamanagaSchoolChildrensFund/
THANK YOU!!
