After just one year in Women for Women International’s program, participants’ lives have improved tremendously. Seventy-one percent say their economic situation is better, 49 percent say that they plan to start their own business, and 99 percent of the women feel that their health and families’ health have improved.
Each year I invite supporters of Women for Women International to join me in an excursion to see the beauty and learn from the strength of Rwanda. During the trip, we will meet women who have risen up against their horrific memories, damaged bodies, and pain to rebuild their lives and their communities after war. We will be inspired in discussions with Rwanda’s women leaders, who put in place one of the world’s most progressive gender policies so that the country’s women could build a more just and peaceful future, making Rwanda a model in the global arena. Currently Rwanda boasts a parliament that is 49 percent female.
It took the world more than a decade to start talking publicly about the genocide in Rwanda and to face the world’s passive acquiescence to the horrors that took place there. Let us not wait another ten years to acknowledge Rwanda’s lessons about the importance of women’s participation in the rebuilding of a country, and implement those lessons as we focus on the humanitarian crises before us today and those that lie ahead.
This year, Divine Caroline contributor Lisa Nastasi is joining us on our journey to Rwanda. Here she will share her thoughts and impressions as she meets with the courageous women who continue to inspire me. I hope her words will inspire you.
Zainab Salbi is the founder and CEO of Women for Women International, an international non-profit organization dedicated to providing women survivors of war, civil strife, and other conflicts with the tools and resources to move from crisis and poverty to stability and self-sufficiency, thereby promoting viable civil societies. To learn more about the organization and how to sponsor a woman in a war-torn country visit their Web site.
