In the minds of many, Rwanda is fixed in time—frozen as it was in 1994 at the end of a genocide that claimed over 800,000 people and saw nearly 500,000 women raped in one hundred days. Perhaps we have not revisited this country’s story because the truth was so painful; Rwanda is, after all, a shameful reminder of how little the world did to help as millions were murdered, tortured, and displaced.
It’s time now to look again at Rwanda. Just fourteen years after the horrific genocide that tore this nation apart, Rwanda is a country rebuilt and revived. Its triumphant success story holds many lessons for the rest of the world: namely, that women are crucial in the rehabilitation and healing of any war-torn country.
The genocide in Rwanda literally left the women behind to pick up the pieces. After the violence subsided in 1994, 70 percent of the remaining population of Rwanda were women. If communities were going to survive and if the country was ever going to recover, it was up to them to make it happen. They forced themselves to face the inconceivable and they rebuilt. It was women who cleaned the dead bodies from the streets, women who rebuilt the homes, and women who solved the national orphan crisis—over 500,000 children with nowhere to go. Nearly every woman took at least one child into her home.
When Women for Women International began working in Rwanda in 1997, it was clear that women needed the skills to rebuild their country. Over the past eleven years, over 21,000 women have gone through our intensive one year sponsorship program where they were matched with a “sister” overseas who sent them $27 a month and a letter to support her emotional transformation. The direct aid each month addresses the woman’s immediate economic needs such as feeding her children or paying for school fees. During her intensive training, she is grouped with twenty other women from her community and receives job skills training and women’s rights education. At the end of the year, the woman is able to stand on her own feet and has moved from victim of war to a survivor, and an active citizen in her community.
