Grassroots Rwanda

Life in Rwanda is rapidly changing yet, compared with the comfortable West, it is still desperately hard especially in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic. The Grassroots Rwanda Trust supports the work of The Episcopal Church of Rwanda in Shyogwe Diocese.


The Trust aims to give a hand up, not a hand out: although giving aid is at times needed, they seek to help fund life-transforming projects like health clinics and schools.


They work through the Anglican Church in Rwanda also helping with churches (repairs and teaching) and the Bible and Development School.

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Building work SOS

The Trust is is appealing for donations to help renovate the Archdeacon's house, which is in need of exentive repair and modernisation. 

One Archdeacon is living in a house built by the original missionaries in the 1920s, it is structurally good but needs a complete makeover estimated at around £6,000. We hope to collect £2,500 to cover just the bathroom (which interestingly has a bath in it - obviously, with such a shortage of water this needs to be converted to a shower) and the kitchen, which has one old wood-burning stove and no means to prepare food except on the ground. The room is constantly full of smoke.


Any donation most gratefully received and all used towards this project:


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Training for young women

The Trust would like to help train 10 young women to receive a necessary qualification in order to sell their own made clothing - giving them an independent income and keeping them out of the hands of their abusers.
A group of young women we met on a recent trip had been subjected to sexual violence. We have previously given them training and a sewing machine so they can make their own clothes, and also make clothes to sell, giving them independence from their abusers.

But the Diocese is concerned that without a formal qualification from a training centre they may not be able to sell their clothes to the public. It is a three-month residential course which would cost £250 for each of the girls, so we hope to raise £2,500 to give all 10 of them a qualification to ensure that they can continue to sell goods and thereby keep themselves safe. 

Any donation most gratefully received and all used towards this project:
Donate to this appeal

How it started

Following the 1994 genocide, three quarters of the population in that parish alone were widows and orphans – the needs of the people were great.  David Dale visited Shyogwe Diocese for the first time in April 1999 and immediately recognised that funds raised in the UK could go a long way to helping a people so traumatised by the genocide. 

The David Dale Shyogwe Trust came into being and over the years has grown – both in numbers of supporters and in the numbers of Rwandans supported. It was rebranded as GrassRoots Rwanda in 2018.


Over the past five years, over £200,000 has been raised. Canon David Dale, former Commissary to Bishop Jered, is now retired but makes the occasional visit to Shyogwe Diocese and maintains a keen interest in the Trust.  He is invaluable in his knowledge of the people and their family history and of a culture so different to that of the UK. 

Each year, one or more of the Trustees travel to Shyogwe Diocese thereby maintaining personal links with those whom we aim to support. 

These visits are self-funded and we seek to:

 

  • support the Bishop in Shyogwe by visiting parishes and encouraging pastors and congregations
  • monitor projects – observing the progress made between visits and assessing additional needs that might be supported by the Trust whether in building, education, training and/or health projects
  • provide reports of visits detailing progress on existing and planned projects.