'I have always had it in my heart that every child needs and deserves an education, but I previously had no way to realise that dream,' explains Kambunda Evarist, founder and head teacher of St. Evarist Primary School in Ruhiira. Back in 2004, he decided to pool all the resources he had to establish a first rate primary school in his home community.
St.Evarist, a private school, caters for families who can . . . [more]
Laundry soap, margarine, cooking oil, skin moisturizer: all these are products shoppers in developed countries drop into their carts without a second thought. In Mwandama, a remote village in Malawi with no supermarket and limited internet, the community was falling right through the meshes of the consumer grid. But a group of enterprising women has achieved nothing less than a small revolution by effectively turning themselves into sales representatives for the world's second-largest consumer . . . [more]
Mayange had been yearning for this moment for a long time: finally, the community of this Rwanda Millennium Village has seen the light, in every sense of the word.
Janvier Nzanywayimana was one of the people who were living in the dark. Now connection to the electricity grid has allowed him to go to university. How? 'I finished high school in 2007 but couldn't afford to continue my education. . . . [more]
Martha dusts a small table with flour then starts kneading the dough, before dividing it into tennis-sized balls. Next to her, Jennifer places the balls on a tray and straight into the oven's open mouth. The sweet smell of baked bread suddenly fills the air. A few minutes later, the golden, warm rolls are taken out and brushed with margarine, turning into deliciously shiny pearls. The group . . . [more]
Lunch time in Ruhiira? Look no further. 'Fang Fang' is the place to go for yummy matooke (bananas) and beans. The woman behind this thriving micro-business is Tumushabe Boneconcila, whose entrepreneurial spirit is doing much to both improve the quality of her own life and radically shake up ideas of traditional gender roles in the community. Before the arrival of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in 2006, Boneconcila had begun building what would become Fang Fang and . . . [more]
Not long ago, next to the Ruhiira Health Centre was a relatively unassuming looking building surrounded by scattered building blocks and cast in the shadow of a towering radio mast which usually had the ICT facilitator Elly Nankunda tinkering at the top of it.
Come July 2010, however, and the place was unrecognisable, transformed into a Community Resource Centre (CRC) which Jeffrey Sachs deemed to be 'the first of its kind in . . . [more]
An entrepreneurial group of Mayange residents are building a new business by taking an old idea—beekeeping—and updating it with the help of training from the Millennium Villages Project and financial support from the Mayange Community Development Fund.
A total of 33 men and women who previously kept from one to ten traditional beehives to produce medicinal honey have formed a beekeeping cooperative to build modern hives to supply honey for the local . . . [more]
All were anxiously expecting it: the farmers in order to sell off their harvest, the community to buy good quality products, and the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) team to kick-start this income generating venture. On November 10, the cassava flour processing plant started production in Mayange, Rwanda. Less than two months later, it's already a success.
Until then, farmers in the region were selling their cassava fresh to traders and buying the flour they use as staple food from the market at a hiked price. The establishment of the plant means that they will increase their income by trading a . . . [more]
Fifteen years ago, Rwanda was devastated by one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. Close to a million people were massacred in 100 days. As the country continues its difficult but remarkable recovery from the genocide, the Millennium Village of Mayange is living proof that economic development can play a significant role in the reconciliation process.
Mayange, located south of the capital Kigali, saw . . . [more]
Patrice Nsihimymihigo's small courtyard is covered with cassava. Sitting around it, women peel the brown roots and throw them back milky white onto the pile. Soon, his buyers, Rwandan middlemen, will whisk away his harvest to sell it at the border with Burundi.
Patrice is one of many smallholders in the Mayange Millennium Village, 40 km South of Kigali, who have been . . . [more]
Business Development • Education • Ruhiira, Uganda
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