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Thursday 30 November 2017

Midway with Mukabuga by Redempta Inema

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”- Mahatma Gandhi.

When I applied for ICS, I was unsure about my career path, but I knew the goals which ICS promotes are aligned with my passion of sustainable socio-economic development. Many of my friends did not understand why I wanted to volunteer, and I too, thought I might regret doing it, but six weeks into my project in Huye, Rwanda and I am certain that volunteering with ICS is worthwhile. 

We currently work with various beneficiary groups, and I am privileged to be part of the teams that work with Entrepreneurship Club, Dance Group and Mukabuga Women. For the purpose of this blog post I am going to focus on the Mukabuga Women, one of our beneficiary groups.

The Mukabuga Women are single mothers, who are currently enrolled in a vocational tailoring training course, who will be setting up a co-operative this upcoming January. In the past six weeks, we have been teaching these women some basic business skills, as complex business ideas have been difficult to teach due to the limited literacy level of the group. One of the most successful sessions we delivered to this group was on peer counselling, helping them to know how they can support each other emotionally. But more importantly, we also learnt how difficult being a single mother is and how it hinders their work productivity. Unfortunately, there have been limitations of what we can do, given the capital we have, which has been a problem across all projects.

From my experience working with the Mukabuga Women, in the past six weeks, I have witnessed that many of the women struggled to focus during our sessions with them. The reason being that the women are unable to afford sending their children to school, so instead the children spend their days hanging around, while their mother distractedly works on her sewing machine. In fact, the children can spend the entire day having eaten nothing else other than breastmilk. As volunteers, we had planned to create a play area to help the women focus on their work to a greater extent by keeping their children busy playing. The play area also aimed at giving the women a way to prepare porridge for the kids, so that they don’t have to spend much time with them for breastfeeding. Unfortunately, we were not able to do this because our limited capital couldn’t allow it. However, I personally think that this is something that should be taken into consideration given its advantage of making the training more effective. 


Even though, some of our plans were not as successful as we hoped. I am glad that right now Mukabuga Women are motivated to work in a co-operative and understand all it takes to start up their sewing co-operative as a result of the few sessions we conducted as volunteers. However, there is a need to continue helping this group after they have started a co-operative since they will need skills and knowledge regarding marketing their products and strengthening their co-operative.

From my own point of view, the Mukabuga Women are people who are interested in starting their own business, despite the fact that they face a number of challenges as single mothers. I was delighted to hear that the name of their co-operative will be “BEST FUTURE”. This proves that they understand that although they are vulnerable today, they believe in starting a sewing business as a step towards a bright future. This is something that is really stuck in my heart and that keeps inspiring me since I also believe in positive thinking as the best way to overcome life struggles.

It’s at the halfway point, all is well with me, and I am proud of my accomplishments so far, even though some plans didn’t work well. I love what I am doing now, and I am glad that it is aligned with what I studied in school and my career as well. I think back and wonder about where else I could get an experience and a learning opportunity like this one. You can’t imagine that in six weeks only, my interpersonal skills have improved and English listening skills too! 



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