adVenture Rwanda

Assiting RDIS (Rural Development Inter-Diocesan Service) for 10 weeks (Jul to Sep '09) with IT, Project Management and Operations consultancy and assistance.

Sunday, 27 September 2009

Thanks so much all!

To those who supported me by reading these stories, with financial support, email encouragements and prayer. As the saying go ‘it wouldn’t h...

Lasting impressions

What will remain with me: Time for people – the Rwandese always have time for people, no matter what the schedule says. There is time to ta...

Meeting my girl at last

I’ve been sponsoring a girl in Nairobi, Kenya, through Compassion for just over 3 years now and on my way back to the UK I stopped over to v...

My Activity Summary

Week 1 – Visit a variety of projects throughout southern Rwanda. Week 2 – Gitarama/Shyogwe: Teaching English; visit more projects in the vic...

Full on till completion

My last week was quite jam-packed trying to get all my little projects finished off properly before I leave, in between visiting friends and...

Community Action Planning

‘Food Security and Livelihoods Improvement through Disaster Risk Reduction’ is the theme of RDIS’ work for the three year period 2008 to 201...

Tracking Chimpanzees in the rain forest

This was quite exciting. We left at 4:30 in the morning to arrive at 6am, when dawn breaks, at the area in the forest where the chimps live....

Saturday, 19 September 2009

Implementing performance monitoring across RDIS projects

During last week, I visited the different regions that RDIS operates in and worked with the members of staff to understand and implement the...

ICT Training

I had a training session scheduled with Andrew, and then when I turned up, there were 8 people eagerly awaiting their training. Andrew decid...

Presentation to the Bishops

I was very privileged to have been invited to a meeting of the bishops of the southern half of the country to show my presentation on my mo...

Savings & Credit Groups

Now this is an initiative that I think is highly effective and makes a huge difference to the people right at the bottom. Micro-credit sche...

Grassroot Churches

A grassroot church is a group of people gathering in someone’s house on a weekly basis (other names known in other countries are cell/home/s...

Sunday, 6 September 2009

Adaption to living with HIV/AIDS

In 2002, Jean-Pierre (one of the RDIS staff) was the head of the provincial committee for HIV/AIDS. Today, we visited families with whom he ...

Children’s Church Choir

I totally loved this group. This was the children’s choir of the church I visited today. The way they interchanged song with dance and acted...

Playing Camera Man (Lady)

Just before I came over, I decided to invest in a camcorder in order to capture my experiences with more authenticity. So I’m very new to th...

Vunga Vocational School

Many children, after finishing primary school, have no means of entering a secondary school. Therefore vocational schools have risen to equi...

Financial Reporting Assistance

I had a chance to dip into the financial side of things here this week as well. One of the project coordinators asked for some assistance in...

Stat’s of Rural Families

RDIS completed their first proper profiles of their beneficiaries this week. Hundreds of forms containing information on the families and th...

Sunday, 30 August 2009

A Goat to Prosperity

Today was once again a complete eye opener for me. RDIS brought a goat for each of the three poorest children attending the Youth at Risk pr...

ICT Training

I started training the RDIS staff in what developing countries call ICT – Information and Communication Technology. Their knowledge in using...

Wednesday, 26 August 2009

Development Performance Indicators

This organisation, and others in the area, and those in other countries, and actually many aided projects around the globe have, and still d...

What Westerners have Lost

Self-consciousness of westerners, I think, made over the years that they have lost a sense of freedom. I’ve yet to meet someone in this coun...

A Saturday with Compassion Kids

7:50am this morning, we (two other volunteers and I) were collected at home by the Accountant of Compassion Project 727, and we ascended the...

Achievement with the kiddies

Well, as for the teaching of English, I’m not too sure if the children have improved that much yet. But, at least I managed to teach them tw...

Saturday, 15 August 2009

Ceramic water filters project

Having clean water to drink is considered a luxury in the country. Water is mainly obtained through collecting rain water or from bore hole...

Domestic water tanks

These water tanks are slowly spreading throughout the country, depending on the people’s ability to afford cement. Rainwater captured by the...

Fruit adverts

Bananas for sale! You can’t buy one banana though, their only sold per branch. Costs app 50 pence per branch (about 80 bananas). Avo’s almos...

Kigali Memorial Museum

Not the most ideal place to visit on a day off – a museum portraying a genocide – but certainly one of the most insightful things to do in t...

Rabit for dinner …

being prepared by the butcher on the left and the cook on the right.

Newsletter

RDIS started a quarterly newsletter earlier this year to inform their beneficiaries, donors and local community on whet their up to. I was d...

Sunday, 9 August 2009

Thanks for keeping visiting!

Progress Reporting

It’s quite ironic that a weak point of mine, writing, is one of the main needs of the organisation I am working with. As their English skill...

Lake Kivu – Kibuye Day Trip

We had a great day out! I joined the students group from the UK (Transform team) for a day trip to lake Kivu. On these very bendy roads, it ...

Banana Leave Cards Marketing

One of the products of the Youth at Risk projects (see my section in this for more info) is the making of cards, using banana leaves as deco...

English Teaching Progress

I already completed two weeks of teaching English! This week, due to other activities, I didn’t teach every day, and strangely enough I actu...

Fruit Juice & Jam Factory

The fruit juice and jam factory of RDIS was bourn to address two requirements. Firstly, to provide pineapple farmers in the region with an a...

Pineapple Widows

An association for widows (from the genocide and HIV AIDS deaths and wives of men in jail) was formed in 2000. Together, the women started g...

Genocide after effects

15 Years later, the country is still struggling because of the genocide set-back. Many women were widowed and children orphaned because the ...

Disaster prevention methods

One aspect the RDIS projects are very attend to is disaster prevention. Droughts, floods and famine as a result of climate change are real c...

Living the Word

So many places we’ve visited and people we met, locals, organisations, NGO’s, churches, children … I noticed them share the word of God inte...

Monday, 3 August 2009

Teachers Help Please!

I’m a bit thrown in to the deep en here – now delivering two English classes a day for up to 90min each! Everyone wants to learn English as ...

African Style Church

Yep, true to its reputation, church goes on for 3 hours, and now I’ve experienced it as well. Though I need to admit that their services are...

Kitchen Gardens

Here is a wide-practiced initiative of conserving water when managing crops for own consumption, called the Kitchen Garden (pronounced ‘chic...

Organic Farmers

Rwanda’s great asset of the spectacular rolling green hills, is also a big drawback to the people’s prosperity. Because of the majority of l...

Sunbathing

After lunch one day, I was ‘slurp’ing in the sun, sitting on the grass outside. I soon was so lekker lui that I decided to take a quick nap ...

Bugarama Rice Plantation

This project visit was completely crazy. When we got out of the car, we were surrounded by children immediately, and as we did our walk thro...

Kigeme Remote Village

I joined a group of youth from the UK for a day. We drove for 2 hours (at 10 to 20 km/h) from the town Kigeme to get to this remote village....

Water Supply

The other day, we stayed at a Guest House on our visit to a project. I was quite impressed with the standard, but little did I know that wat...

Welding Workshop

In welding classes, children learn to make items such as doors, windows, tables and transport mechanisms.

Carpentry Workshop

Wherever you go in Rwanda, you’re bound to see some carpenter entrepreneurs with small businesses on the road. It is from their products tha...

Sewing Training

Here is Martha, a girl that graduated from the Youth at Risk programme and is now employed to teach other children. She’s also one of my top...

Youth at Risk

Children between the age of 14 and 22 who have been orphaned (either as a result of HIV AIDS, malaria, the 1994 genocide or their parents j...

Mother’s Union

After the genocide, the country was left with a vast number of widows, many of whose husbands died and other whose husbands were jailed. A l...

Oh the Cow is a wonderful thing…

Amazing, one cow actually has the potential to assist a family out of poverty. Its manure increases soil nourishing for increased crop produ...

Animal Pharmacy

Shyogwe’s animal care / agriculture centre. Here, locals can buy all sorts of products to look after their animals, as well as plant seeds –...

Trees – Climate Change Prevention

Why then are so much more trees required? Shouldn’t there be lots already seeing that the country is on the equator with a favourable climat...

Tree Nurseries

Who wants a more idyllic setting to work in? In the outdoors with enough shade and the rolling green hills as surrounding. Tree nurseries is...

Tackling the issue of HIV-AIDS

Behind this door, in the Shyogwe diocese, I met a lady who’s contributed so much to the community in terms of addressing HIV and I really ad...

Mahongo Market

I paid the local market a visit today. Here is the food section. Apart from this, they sell mainly clothes and shoes (all imported). You’d p...

Local Shops

I’ve had the question about shops around here. Well there’s actually not much to tell on this topic, ‘cause there are very few. With the exc...

Sunday, 26 July 2009

Back in time

I’m really mind blown at how time could have seemed to stand still around here in terms of development. I still remember my Sub B (year 2) c...

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