Kinigi, Ruhangeri, Rwanda

 

Outside of the northern city of Ruhangeri, Rwanda, near the volcanoes and a cultural center, a host of villages sit amongst potato, corn and pyrethrum fields. The area is designated to grow these three crops. Their potatoes feed a good portion of Rwandan mouths but people in the area usually only eat potatoes once a month. Recently the price of a kilo of potatoes went from 120Rwf to 60Rwf – a travesty of a price plunge. Yet most of the famers are not even landowners themselves. Wealthier individuals own large plots of land where the crops grow and people actually living in the area are highly impoverished and largely food insecure. There is not enough land or the commitment to have strategic home gardens that can really produce enough to feed their families.

Community members referenced past projects and their failures. One Oxfam project gave them seeds but when they got the seeds it was the dry season and they didn’t grow. The farmers didn’t realize it would be dry season because in past years they had received rain during that time of year. They mentioned that it was probably due to industry that contributes to climate change. They have been planting according to the seasons for years, but now, with global climate change, the weather is less predictable and less consistent, making agriculture harder. They reported the problem to Oxfam when they came for a follow up visit, but the village never heard back, or again, from Oxfam.

There are two primary groups in the region who used to clash, but now intermarry and work together. One group admitted to living day to day by stealing crops from the potato and corn fields. The other group described some small businesses they are doing. Some women sell charcoal in town. It is a three hour walk to town where on a good day they can sell up to 1000Rwf (around $1.70) and they travel up to four days a week there. Then they buy food and return home exhausted. The other business that was presented was of a sorghum beer bar. This bar is the one of the only businesses actually in their town and men and women alike go there. Kids at the age of ten were asking for money to buy beer. This is not unique to this region. Local bars often make the best businesses, catching those who have no work and providing them a space to sit and drink the day away. Their buildings are often the biggest and strongest ones in villages with potential exception to churches. The group explained that even with these few income-generating projects, almost no one has the ability to buy the mandatory health insurance. They get pestered by government officials for not having it. They explained that they struggle to get food, cannot cover school fees for their kids, haven’t any seeds to plant, don’t attract development because of their poor roads, rarely have safe water and cannot find jobs.

They are proud of two projects; an association they have formed to save and pay for health insurance for members, and another group saving program that they have recently started. They proposed a number of projects they would like to achieve. These including starting an agricultural project, fixing their roads, getting animals or manure and fertilizer, build a nursery school or find a place to fetch water. They all agreed that the first priority is food security and over the next two weeks they will be gathering and recording ideas for how to do this. In early January we will post their ideas online.

Ernest Gasabo, a journalist student at University is helping to facilitate a MicroGrant for the community.

Goats for the Women of Ubutwale Bwo Kubaho

After long debates among the women leaders of Ubutwale Bwo Kubaho, over the pros and cons of two final projects, that were goat rearing and dorm building, the women came to a consensus that goat rearing is the better option. Although building a dorm would create much needed housing for students in the area, appreciate in value and generate jobs and income rather quickly, the women became worried about the real cost of building the dorm and the risks that go with it. Goats, however, are easy to raise and they claim can reach all 1701 members in three years. They will purchase 100 goats in multiple installments to kick off the project. If something goes wrong, such as a goat getting sick and dying, it doesn’t put the whole project at risk – as the dorm project could.

The women are setting up a governance system for the project. A group of managers will organize the order of who gets goats when (those who are poorest will get them first) and will be responsible for collecting the first born of each goat and redistributing it. They will also take care of their group bank account where the women can save money for emergencies or starting new projects.

The goats will be used for meat (income generation and nutrition), milk (nutrition, especially for children) and manure (fertilizer for their crops).

The women are really excited and the ones who have done the most work writing proposals and meeting with our facilitator, Moses, are not even going to be benefiting directly from the project until a few years down the line. The head of the association volunteers her time for the women and only makes money through her work at a near by parish. She takes care of her own children along with orphans that she has adopted. She has been incredibly grateful and supportive of the entire MicroGrant process. Another woman who leads a sub group within the association was fighting for the goat project because there were some women in her group that are so poor that they cannot wait or risk the chance for development on a dorm when a goat could be given directly to the person and help turn around her life.

Karambi Village now has a water pump and water storage tank!

Karambi Village, Rwanda now has a storage tank and water pump so everyone can access clean water. The water tank connects to a pipeline that frequently runs dry. With the tank they can store water for the families there throughout the dry spells. The community members voluntarily helped construct the project and provide $19 for a tap that measures the quantity of water released. Charges can be made per collection that will go to the company supplying the water. A few kilometers away, on the other side of the hill, a water pump dug by Karambi village members and installed and donated by Living Water was completed on Wednesday. A huge thank you goes to Living Water for providing the materials and installation! The pump is on land donated by Fred, our facilitator for the project. It will be used by families who currently collect water from a valley, which was clean until a few years ago when development started taking place and has since become quite polluted and not safe to drink. Many people don’t even boil their water; leaving their families in great danger of parasites and disease. Both the water tank and pump will have clean water, good for humans and agriculture and it wont impose such a hassle to collect now that it is closer and reliable to gather.

The village and its leaders thank Spark for supporting the project and noted that it is their first time an NGO or donor has been there. They are proud of the project and held a meeting on Friday to discuss security of the project and fund collection for the upkeep of it.

In the same village a few men received goats as part of a nanogrant. Their goats are all pregnant! The individuals who helped lead the MicroGrant project within the village and have shown their dedication to its success are now forming a group to try and gain support to start economic activity to bring them out of poverty. They have written a proposal to have a meeting with us about how to do this and inquired about where to find start up money. It is this kind of proactive energy that is wonderful to see after each project is complete. Many members see the MicroGrant project as a time to show off their capabilities and hard work which seems to be something good to support! Hopefully as we develop as an organization we will be better positioned to connect our villages to other NGOs, banks and opportunities.

Four months in

After four months of being in Rwanda and Uganda, we have seen MicroGrants take off in communities that have never before had the chance to develop their own social projects. We have seen women in Uganda transform from subsistence farmers wanting assistance, to an empowered and proactive group who are building their own school for children and pressing their local government for support. Communities in Rwanda have debated and drawn up their own proposals around safe water, electricity, food security, animal rearing and economic development. Three projects are being implemented, three groups are developing their proposals, two are starting the process soon and many more are being surveyed who we would love to work with.

Implementing Projects:

- In Bukomero, Rwanda, the animal projects have begun; chickens, goats and pigs are now in the hands of the women and men who designed proposals for the projects. In the next few months we will see if the animals remain healthy, give birth and are passed on. In six months we will determine if the first round of animal owners (59 families) will have seen an increase in profit, individuals in the household with health insurance and children in school. Currently, ten of the families do not have their children in school, almost half of the group does not have health insurance and only one person is close to making a dollar a day, most families make under two dollars per month. The group is hoping that animals will help them with manure for their fields and a sustainable income source since they are manageable to raise, multiply and there is local demand.

- In Wanteete Village, Uganda, the women have purchased a piece of land to build their school on. They are collecting building materials and tending to their garden and pig project that they have started.

- In Karambi Village, Rwanda, the community has started digging their water well and members are building the structure for the water tank. 

Developing Proposals:

- In Ruhango, Rwanda, a community is in their first stage of project development where community members are discussing how to get electricity into their village.

- In Kigundu Zone, Uganda, women have developed their proposal for stopping the flooding that invades their homes and paths during the rainy season. They are going to review feedback from engineers this week to help them plan their trench. 

- Outside of Butare, Rwanda, women have been developing tens of project proposals to fight poverty through a communal business. Last week they reorganized and groups with similar projects collaborated on new and improved proposals. There are now seven groups developing proposals for different projects, including animal rearing, a wholesale beverage business and a hostel for students.

Starting soon:

-       A new MicroGrant opportunity will be presented to a group of youth in Uganda who are struggling to find education and jobs.

-       In Rwanda, a new MicroGrant will start with a highly impoverished and isolated community near the Virunga volcanoes.

More being surveyed:

In the past two weeks we have visited a number of HIV Associations throughout Rwanda. Some have been given support, such as health insurance coverage and machines for grinding grains, but others are new and struggling with stigmatization, food security, poverty and physical weakness. Each group presented their situation to us, to describe their lives, their struggles and their joys. Every single association has pointed to three big problems. The first one is that people with HIV/AIDS are still heavily stigmatized. There are many people who live with HIV but only the poor ones join the association. Some members described that when they tried to take out a loan or have a neighbor help them they would be denied because there is a general sentiment that it’s not reliable to give someone with HIV/AIDS support – because they might die tomorrow or before the loan is repaid. The second major problem is malnutrition. Families need more food with more diversity. The third problem is that of poverty and physical weakness. They cannot afford to cover all of their basic needs, such as health insurance and the 15% of health care fees that are mandatory when they go to the clinic for something other than an 'essential' medicine, such as ARVs.

We have also discussed about groups in the northern Musanze District in Rwanda where the soil is rich but malnutrition is rampant. Ernest, an aspiring journalist and recent University graduate is living in the area and knows the communities well. He is engaged with supporting anyone who wants to help them develop.

While these groups (and many more) are appealing to work with and would benefit immensely from a MicroGrant, we need to raise more support for Spark MicroGrants before we engage with them. By the end of January 2011 we need another $20,000 to engage six new communities. Lets see if we can do it!

Our donation page

Electricity

In Ruhango, Rwanda, Karambi Village has organized around the need for electricity. Their MicroGrant is for up to $2000 and will help them set up an electrical line into the village, providing a main source that people can then build off of to get electricity into businesses and homes in the area.

A number of the village members have already organized themselves around specific businesses and formed cooperatives that produce goods such as honey, bricks, banana wine, and pineapple juice. One of the most established cooperatives made products from bananas and pineapples. Their factory was clean and well kept with a small store and office on its side. They bought fruit directly from farming cooperatives in the region and had gained support from a Netherland based development organization for machines to press the juice and process the wine. The cooperative had twenty people and their shared profit would run between 200,000RwF and 500,000RwF a month which comes out to be about $17- $43 a month per person.

The MicroGrant is going toward an infrastructure project, not benefiting a specific kind of business or a specific home, but the communities ability to access and use electricity if they need it and for whatever purpose they choose.

Flooding in the slums of Uganda

Walking through any slum can make you question why urbanization is so great. Sanitation and sewage problems are disturbing by sight and smell. In Kigundu Zone, Uganda, a group of women have started discussing the flooding that occurs in their part of the slum when the rains come. The water from the open water system floods into their mud paths and into their houses, not only a terrible disturbance, but dangerous for water born diseases and attracting mosquito’s that may carry malaria.

In early October Aaron, the MicroGrant facilitator in Wanteete Village, approached the women about a MicroGrant. He listened intently during their second meeting while the women discussed the multitude of problems facing them: poverty and unemployment, orphans who have lost their parents to HIV and other diseases, lack of education, sanitation and flooding. They ultimately decided to address the flooding that occurs, a serious social sector problem not being addressed by anyone. They are thinking about fixing the trench which runs through the slums with a $1000 MicroGrant. 

This group of women are taking care of the kids, attempting to start small businesses and now volunteer their time to fixing a community trench. Many of the men have abandoned their families and left the women without resources, yet the women are pushing to get their kids into school and dinner on the table. Some organizations have attempted to clean up slums through volunteer cleaning efforts and education project but few seem to ask the community how to do it and dare them to do it with funding. We will now get to see how the women in Kigundu Zone tackle the problem.

Wanteete Village Celebration

Last Sunday there was a celebration in Wanteete Village for the completion of the MicroGrant Competition!

They women are ready to build their school. They have aquired the land and have already started the school garden which has beens, cassava, corn and soon some vegetables as well! The women showed their joy on Sunday with a celebration of dances, singing and food for everyone who came. They presented Aaron, the facilitator, and myself with pineapples, papayas and a few eggs - incredibly generous gifts from a group of subsistence farmers. The remarkable thing is that the women were celebrating the gift of a mere $1600 to fund a project that they are doing the work for. The women have created committees including those to care for the school garden, a pig rearing project for school income and the school governance. All the positions are voluntary and for the construction of the school the women who can are each providing a wooden post. They are pouring themselves into this project in hopes that it will launch their children into a better future.

One concern about the project was sustainability; how to ensure there is money to pay the two teachers and buy books for the students. In January/February they are organizing a local fundraiser in hopes to have local candidates running in upcoming elections to compete for their votes by donating money. Local politicians have money to spend at the local level but in Uganda it is often used to buy off votes and does not get spent on social projects like schools and health clinics. The women see an opportunity to use their success in building their own school as leverage and their power as a group to pressure candidates to support the school.

At every level of this competition the women are enthusiastically providing whatever they can, they are a great example of how communities throughout our world have incredible potential and will show persistence in working for social benefits if they are resourced with even a minimal amount of organization and funding. Community energy and local expertise exist where development is needed but it is not being utilized. Through MicroGrants we are figuring out great ways to effectively harness the utility of communities.

Local adaption of a national program; sustenance farmers adding animals to their production

Bukomero Village members came together for a third time last Saturday to discuss their desire to start animal projects. This is the same village where the traditional dancers are from. The rainy season is coming soon and people are planting their next harvest. Families are largely reliant on growing their own food and agriculture sales, yet this is not enough to sustain a family. Water from a pipe is 10 Rwandan Francs per jerry can (about 20 liters), a family typically uses 3-4 jerry cans of water a day, heath care is 1000Rwf a year per person and although primary education is supposed to be free, uniforms, materials and school food add up. Growing and selling crops is not very profitable although it makes sense for local sustainability, the ecosystem and the environment. A pineapple can be sold for 120Rwf, a fruit that bears once a year; a kilo of green bananas is sold for less than 100Rwf. While each person may grow a bit of produce to sell, they also need to grow enough to feed a family every day.

The national government of Rwanda in partnership with Heifer International has a cow project, where they give a cow to the poorest person in a village and the first calf that is birthed is given to the next poorest person. The project has seen benefits. Cows are highly respected and desired here as in most of East Africa. They can be sold for 700+ US dollars and used for food. A problem that faces people raising cattle is the cost of feed and a problem that faces the community is that cattle are not birthed quickly. It will take a long time for one cattle to give enough offspring to provide benefits for the whole community.

The members of Bukomero Village know of the benefits of having animals. It provides a means of nutrition, money and economic growth for a family. A pig can give birth to 10 piglets at once, chickens can lay eggs and breed and goats can reproduce as well. The profitability of animals and their production will help lift the burden of every day expenses for the people of Bukomero Village, while keeping their lifestyle locally sustainable. They will still grow their own food crops through land cultivation, but have animals roaming their grounds as well. While many projects seek to profit from capital in cities or external regions, this project will let the people of Bukomero gain greater food security and income on their own land. 

In the above picture you can see members voting on the project and in the very top pictures, they are writing their grant proposals. They worked for over two hours developing their ideas and writing their proposals. Each group voted on a president and vice president who will be responsible for tracking project success and reporting back to the MicroGrant facilitator and Spark MicroGrants. More internal logistics are being worked out. For more information and to participate in the conversation around this project, visit our google group: http://groups.google.com/group/microgrants-bloom

The group thanks Spark and everyone who is contributing to the project for choosing to help them. They are incredibly grateful for the opportunity.

Digging for Water

Our water project in Bugesera, Rwanda is developing and after a realization that some projects will benefit from experienced advisors, we are collecting advice and a volunteer engineer to help with the project. I'm getting to learn a lot more about the necessary steps and cautionary points in digging a water well!

We're going to have a Rwandan Engineer with experience in well construction, and who is currently working for UNICEF, to help develop the project plans for both the water tank and water well and supervise and support the construction of both. There will be a community member responsible for tracking and reporting progress at each site and a woman supervisor from the community (whose husband is not involved in the project) who will supervisor both sites.

Unfortunately access to clean water is a major problem plaguing many in the developing world. Thankfully there are many people working tirelessly to change this. With more well projects being implemented, people are learning better ways to do it and more people are gaining experiences of how to do it. Water Aid has done a nice job keeping information about water pumps online for open sharing of experiences, planning and technology. The New York Times recently ran a number of posts from a professor of science and technology on access to clean water in Rwanda! Their links are below. I'll post more on our own project when it starts within the next few weeks.

Designs for water pumps

New York Times article

NEW PROJECT - Nano Grants

The question about how a small amount of money – say $20 – can be used most effectively comes into many of our minds as we hear about and see poverty. There have been a number of ways people have tried to go about this, hand out money, hand out items, sponsor a child to go to school, buy a small animal for someone etc. When you are interacting with people who you want to benefit from your donations directly, it makes this process much more transparent and support ends up in the hands of those with the luck to meet a generous person. If you’ve done this before and want to share how you gave money, how it was used and your thoughts on it now, please share them!

What if we could do this from afar with similar effects? We're going to test NanoGrants - a quicker, smaller version of MicroGrants - by offering $50 to $200 to communities who engage in a discussion with us about their situation, problems, solutions and available resources. Similarly to a MicroGrant, the group would have to write a short proposal of how they will use the money and ensure that the group will benefit from it.

 

Nano-Grants already in the works:

Three men in Karambe are writing a proposal to start a community goat project. They will care for the goats and when they give birth to new goats, they will give it to a community leader who will distribute it to someone who is in high need of an animal.

A group of HIV positive women in Wanteete have organized in hopes to gain better access to ARV’s. Currently they don’t have enough money to pay for them. They are writing a proposal to start a pig project to generate income that they can use to pay for medicine. They are using a mere $50 to kick off the project by buying piglets.

Community update: Wanteete Village, Uganda

I just returned from Kampala where the MicroGrant competition in Wanteete Village is getting heated! Three groups are developing different proposals on how to increase access to pre-primary education for the kids in the village. Aaron said that each group discusses their project throughout the week; even in between meetings building proposals in hopes that their proposal will win. Of course no matter which groups proposal wins, all of their children will stand to benefit. Currently children are walking very far to an overstuffed and under-resourced school. The walk is dangerous. Aaron said that one child disappeared last year on his walk to school. Aaron and the BESO staff have been enthusiastically supporting the women and helping them write proposals – a huge project for a group of women who do not know how to read or write! Proposals have been drafted and handed in, we’ve uploaded them onto the following discussion page: http://groups.google.com/group/microgrants-bloom

Appreciating Community Activists

As our first MicroGrant competitions start unfolding in Rwanda and Uganda some themes are coming up about community organization. In Uganda, some women are getting impatient and the massive enthusiasm at the beginning of the competition is waning in the midst of the long process of writing and revising proposals. A good number of women (seen above) are still seeing the project through, consistently coming to meetings and keeping the energy high. These women undoubtedly should gain praise for their dedication to community work. Two primary questions arise from this:

1.    How long should the competition be?

2.    How can we socially support outstanding community activists?

In response to the first question:

The length and process of the competitions (often nine weeks) could pose problems. If a community of women who are subsistence farmers, mothers, small business participants etc, and are gathered for weekly meetings to do extra work for their community, it could take away their time for other projects. What if people are impatient and want things done quickly? Should we reject this notion? How would projects compare if the timetable for designing them were different? Shorter competitions could engage a larger group.

The length does however have bountiful benefits. The experience of working on a project for a long time before seeing the benefits, is quite useful as an experience to reference when the community attempts future projects. Likewise, knowing how to design a project plan and budget is incredibly valuable for any public or private sector endeavor. Holding long competitions where only 2/3 of the original participants actively participate can be useful as a mechanism for knowing who will sustain interest in their project throughout its lifespan – similar to how professors sometimes try to weed out uninterested students by making their classes hard the first few days. If a group of people cannot dedicate themselves to the competition then they may not be able to dedicate themselves to the implementation and sustaining of their projects. If competitions are shorter, it probably means fewer participants will be heard and revisions will be shorter. This could be dangerous for the ultimate quality of a project and opportunity to empower those who are often seen to have a weak voice. In Wanteete, dozens of women still show up for all the meetings persuaded to work by the chance to improve their children’s future. These are the women who should be recognized by the global community for their persistence.

Ultimately I think that having between 5-9 weeks to host a competition and design a project is greatly beneficial. The exception would be if the community already had a project thought through, such as the water project in Bugesera, Rwanda (although even this one is taking about a month to solidify before implementation).

In response to the second question:

For those who enthusiastically work throughout the MicroGrant competition and thereafter for the benefit of the whole community, we should provide them extra social support. Ideally internal support will work, but it is always nice to have other support too. At work or school, your colleagues are great, but a great supervisor can really keep you and the group motivated. Potentially the facilitator can relay messages of support from a global community and advocates who are in great position to publicize their work. Showing positive media and global appreciation of the project can help anyone involved feel encouraged. During the last competition meeting, we could provide a small amount of funding to purchase some snacks and drinks for the group to celebrate their work. Facilitators could also meet with the community every now and then after the project is done and express encouragement.

If you have additional thoughts, please add on!

MicroGrants Blooming

It has now been over a month and a half since project Bloom was launched and soon there will be six MicroGrant competitions underway in Rwanda and Uganda, each touching an under-resourced community! With lots of activity here, we are looking for volunteers to become MicroGrant Advocates, who remotely work to support MicroGrant competitions. It’s a great way to support efficient, effective development.

Advocates are paired with the MicroGrant community of their choice and work remotely to support and promote their competition. Advocate responsibilities include: helping to raise the money for the community project; reviewing and commenting on proposals written by community members; advertising and promoting the grantee’s heroic work in the press. No prior work experience is needed—only enthusiastic compassion! In addition to helping a community in need solve its own problems you will learn about a pressing issue for those living in extreme poverty, and get a ground-level view of how they can be addressed.

The time commitment is approximately 2 hours per week for at least two months. Students can build class projects around MicroGrants. Although Advocates may have the chance to review grant submissions and discuss projects with experts in the field; Spark MicroGrants is really about
enabling the community to define their own problem, design their own project
and carry out the work for it.

If you’re interested, visit: sparkmicrogrants.org

Here are some of the competitions already underway:

Community: Karambe Village
Problem: Access to clean water
The village has submitted their proposal for a well and water storage tank! The group is excited and volunteering their own labor to build the structures and maintain them thereafter.

Community: Wanteete Village
Problem: Pre-primary education
A group of women are meeting every week to develop proposals for a pre-primary school. Join the discussion on their project:

Community: Butare, Rwanda
Problem: Yet to be decided
An association of women in Butare, Rwanda have united after they were divided by the genocide. Wives of genocide perpetrators and widows of men killed have been congregating to discuss and improve their quality of life. A MicroGrant is giving them the opportunity to implement one of their projects!

MicroGrants has the potential to expand very quickly if a global community chooses to support it. NGO leaders and anyone involved with under-resourced communities can use it to allow the community to address a pressing social problem. Students involved in clubs like the Unity and Reconciliation club in Rwanda, that are aimed to support community development, can use MicroGrants to help their home villages or other organizations that they aim to support. Local governments can organize competitions for groups and villages that are rarely reached by aid. The governement in Ruhango, Rwanda has shown a great deal of enthusiasm for the method of development yet needs financial support for competitions. Many communities that have not been given the opportunity to play an active role in their own development are given the chance to implement a project to help their communities through MicroGrants.

Widows of genocide and wives of its perpetrators come together

Butare, a city populated with tens of thousands of students attending Rwanda’s National University, is also home to an association of women made up of widows of the genocide and wives of genocide perpetrators. The Unity and Reconciliation club at the National University works with the group of over 1,700 women to support their community. Members of the association come together for lectures from people who have good ideas to share, such as how to make soap- now one of their community products. They also come together when a problem arises, so they can discuss possible solutions and get each other’s advice on it. This strong communal mentality is not rooted in a lifetime of community living as in other regions of the world. For these women it is in the last fifteen years that they transformed from a group that detested each other, whose husbands were killing each other, killing their friends and children and forcing them to flee their homes. The resonance of the genocide is ever present, especially in families where husbands, sons and daughters are gone, orphans compromise new children and where ‘home’ is a new small plot of land. In the midst of this, these women have created a community and remarkably chosen positivity and unity to guide it.

Most of the women grow vegetables and starches on their land, which helps to feed them and their children. Some have tried to start small businesses with micro-loans but they often run into problems paying them back. One woman explained that when they have to pay school fees for their kids and buy food, they don’t have enough and they take from their business and the loan. Aid should be focused on resourcing women like these. Moses, the President of the Unity and Reconciliation club at the National University visits the women often and advises them on projects. Even before we discussed holding a MicroGrant competition for the women, he brought up the problem that aid groups usually go into communities and tell them what to do. He explained that this happened in another community and the project was not successful. Moses is going to help facilitate a MicroGrant competition for $3000 to allow the women to implement and try one of their projects. The women rejoiced when they heard and again applauded when they heard it was a grant and not a loan. The sense of community and community action embedded in the association very much aligns with MicroGrants, which supports community projects. The meeting I attended with them ended in a dance and celebratory song, leaving positivity flowing through the group.

Lacking clean water

The people of Karambe Village were very clear during our meeting last Friday that access to clean water is their most pressing social issue. They discussed the multiplicity of other problems facing the community, which includes: lack of electricity, poor schooling for their kids and lack of capital to start projects. The need for water though, is severe. There is a tap about three to five kilometers away from the community yet during the dry season the tap runs dry most days, providing water only a few times a month. The community members quickly spouted out ideas of what to do about this. They suggested drilling a well for the side of the village that is too far from the tap and to build a water storage tank for the tap that is accessible on the other side to have a steady supply of water. While this is a needed project, the cost of doing both a well and a water storage tank may run deep into our projects funds. We defiantly do not want to skimp on this side of the project, if you can, please help support this MicroGrant!

Whenever I leave the city center of Kigali, Rwanda, I see land scattered with people, agriculture and yellow plastic containers used for water. Whether it is a group of kids sitting on the side of the road drinking from their fry oil container, women carrying jugs both on their heads and in their hands or men trudging them across a field, they are all over the place. People are using these containers, most of which are old cooking oil containers, to collect water from public pumps. For many these pumps are the only source of clean water they have access to. The problem is that pumps can be far away from villages that do not touch the main roads. Karambe Village in Bugesere district is one of these. The village was prey to violence during the genocide in 1994, leaving many of the villagers massacred. Since then, some who fled and survived have returned and other family members of those deceased have come to claim land and live from it. Most of the population consists of subsistence farmers. They do not always use clean water because the closest pump is still miles away. Many kids are in school and sent to fetch water when they come home at night but families often resort to pools of dirty water for collection. Fred Rwangasana who has started a chicken coup, banana farm and mushroom project in Karambe, all while holding a job in Kigali, will be helping to facilitate this competition. Within a few weeks we will hear more about the village and its project!

Beginnings in Rwanda

40 people from Bukomero Village, 8 to 40 years old, come together to practice Rwandan traditional dance every week at Umuryango Children’s Network in the village. Umuryango is a home for street children that helps get them into schools and stay off the streets. The dancers formed their group to practice and perform traditional dance out of fear that Rwandan culture is disappearing and the delight in performing along with a need for money. The families of the dancers are poor and many of the dancers try to make some money from performances when they are not in school, working the land or fetching water. They are an enthusiastic bunch and eager to continue dancing but they and their families face many hardships such as under nutrition, poverty and poor education. In the following weeks, they will be spending their Saturdays at the Umryango home to participate in a MicroGrant competition; the first in Rwanda!

Jean Paul, Director of Umuryango Support Network will facilitate the competition with the help from his staff at Umuryango. Jean Paul noted that if the whole village was invited to participate, they would show up, but it would be hard to organize because the village is over 500 people. When I meet people from the villages, they easily talk about problems they face and have ideas of what to do about them. People are really interested in MicroGrant competitions and see it as a chance to try a project to help a situation they are worried about. It makes sense when people don’t have basic securities but have the knowledge to increase their communities well being and are willing to work for it, that the are presented with an opportunity to do so.

A winning situation for all

After retuning from Uganda and spending time with Aaron, the benefits of MicroGrants to everyone involved has become ever clearer to me.

1. Communities benefit: The focus of MicroGrants is of course on the pressing needs of communities who lack basic resources and security. It promotes an increase in a human security such as health care, access to clean water and food security. This is dependent on what problem the community chooses to tackle. The community also gains the experience of organizing and thinking in a community oriented and problem solving fashion. It has the potential to empower communities through providing an opportunity structure for them to organize and solve a local problem. This orients away from the handout model, which can have such devastating effects of reliance and inaction at the individual and community level. It also deviates from typical models of community engagement that “engage” communities, such as partnering or taking advise from community members for programs. The benefits of a MicroGrant competition at the community level are abundant.

2. Facilitators benefit: MicroGrant facilitators can have a range of backgrounds but must be invested in helping under-resourced communities. There are many dedicated community activists who want to help people yet they often lack the resources or structure to do so. MicroGrants provides an opportunity for them to carry out an entire competition, organizing community members, learning about their ideas, helping them write grant proposals and seeing through a completed community project – without having to worry about the funding.

3. Donors and organizers benefit: In a field where problems are endless and appropriate solutions are not so clear MicroGrants provides a fabulous opportunity to improve everyone’s spirits and see clear benefits in individuals and communities. Each grant competition touches dozens of community members and new ones each time. The competition and implementation time often take under a year for completion and the administration of it is simple. This quick completion of a small project makes the work tangible and the effects clear. It also makes it easy to see where money is going and where the benefits are, which can all too often be lost in a sea of development cynicism.

First MicroGrant Competition in Uganda Kicks Off!

60 women in rural Wanteete Village to compete

Aaron Bukenya, Director of Burgere Education Support Organization (BESO) is working with Spark MicroGrants to facilitate a competition for a $1,000 grant in Wanteete Village, Uganda. The village is about two and a half hours outside of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. Wanteete residents just barely get by from the crops they grow. Beautiful crops surround people’s homes including vegetables, ground nuts, bananas, corn, millet, pineapple, coffee, vanilla beans and much more. A few chickens and goats roam the grounds. Although their land is fertile and they are able to live substantially from their own food production, their basic needs are barely met – when they are. The nearest health center is five to six miles away and poorly equipped. Most residents of Wanteete are below the poverty line and cannot easily afford medicine or other monetary goods if they need them. Some kids go to school but have to walk miles for a classroom that two hundred plus students try to cram into. There is no electricity and few of the grass-thatched huts that fill the village have latrines.

Aaron dedicates his time to helping underserved children and women in the rural communities of the Bugerere County. He pulls his own time and money to send children to school and organizes women’s groups while also taking care of his family. When he was young, his parents sold their cows and whatever they could to allow him to go to school. As his parents invested in his education, despite their hardships, Aaron is now spending his energy to do what he can for his communities. He founded BESO in 2008. The organization sponsors children’s education and women’s empowerment. You can learn more at: www.besoug.org

This is the first of three $1,000 MicroGrant competitions that Aaron is facilitating in Uganda. We are very excited for these competitions and grateful to Aaron and his coworkers for their hard work serving under-resourced communities and making MicroGrants possible in Uganda!