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What is World Vision doing in Rwanda?
World Vision's International Partnership has a $7 million annual budget for Rwanda, including:
Assistance to child-headed households - children who have lost both parents.
Micro-enterprise development - helping Rwandan families to earn a living.
Agricultural Recovery - providing needed tools and seeds, and helping to improve farming practice and increase yields.
Reconciliation - promoting reconciliation between Hutus and Tutsis so they can live together peaceably once again.
Mental health - providing counseling and other services to promote psycho-social healing and trauma recovery.
For additional information, see Rwanda: The Struggle to Recover.
What is World Vision doing to help child-headed households?
As a result of the 1994 genocide - as well as AIDS and other diseases and endemic poverty - Rwanda has an estimated 65,000 child-headed households, representing more than 300,000 children. World Vision's assistance is reaching 200,000 children. World Vision has provided basic household goods such as cooking utensils, beds and blankets and furniture to child-headed households. Many also are being helped by agricultural assistance, or skills training so they can earn a living. Others are receiving more intensive help, including food, shelter, assistance with school fees, psycho-social counseling, and health care.
For additional information, see Rwanda: The Struggle to Recover.
How can I help?
$33 will pay school fees and buy school supplies for one orphan for a school year
$50 will provide a week's worth of care for one orphan family
$60 will provide an orphan family with basic household supplies (blankets, cooking pots and pans, and soap)
$120 covers the cost of providing 10 people with hoes, seeds, as well as cuttings for beans, potatoes and wheat.
$200 will provide a month's worth of care for one orphan family
$465 will provide a month-long apprenticeship, including meals, for an orphan to learn a marketable skill
$600 will construct or rehabilitate a home for a child-headed family
To give a gift now, please click here.
What is World Vision doing for Ngarukiye Jean-de-Dieu, the child profiled by "20/20"?
When his parents were killed, Jean-de-Dieu collected his brothers and young step-uncles and hid among the papyrus reeds. They scavenged for crops from the fields and fruit from trees. After the Rwanda Patriotic Front took control of Rwanda, the small family was fed by the World Food Program. When they returned to their village, World Vision provided them with rice and beans, cooking oil, soap, salt and other essentials, educational materials, and necessities to help the children attend school. World Vision also has paid a prominent local carpenter to train 15 children, including Jean-de-Dieu.
Can I sponsor Jean-de-Dieu or a child like him?
World Vision will begin child sponsorship in Rwanda in January 2000. Many of the children available for sponsorship will be from child-headed households. In the meantime, gifts to World Vision's work with orphaned families will help these households until the sponsorship program begins. For those who would like to help an individual child, sponsorship is available in Ethiopia and Malawi.
How long has World Vision worked in Rwanda?
World Vision's involvement in Rwanda began in 1976 with relief assistance to families in Cyangugu. In the late 1980's, World Vision assisted refugees from neighboring Burundi, where bloodshed between Hutus and Tutsis would foreshadow 1994's tragedy in Rwanda. World Vision was one of the first agencies to respond to that genocide, in which 500,000 to 800,000 people were killed in three months.
Who does World Vision work with in Rwanda?
In Rwanda, World Vision works with many churches and agencies, including African Evangelistic Enterprise. Among the churches World Vision works with are Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Anglican, Presbyterian and Anglican. It also works with the Pilgrim Center in Minneapolis, the International Committee for Reconciliation (CIRER), the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, various Rwandan government agencies, United Nations agencies including UNICEF and U.S. Government agencies such at the Agency for International Development.
Has the United States contributed to efforts to rebuild Rwanda?
Yes. Since 1984, the U.S. Government has provided more than $8 million through World Vision alone to assist in health, agriculture and refugee relief and rehabilitation efforts. Over that same period of time, the American public has provided more than $4 million to assist World Vision's efforts.
With nearly 1 million people dead from ethnic bloodshed, is there any hope for Rwanda's future?
Yes. Christians within Rwanda are working towards reconciliation. World Vision has sponsored reconciliation seminars and other efforts aimed at bringing all of Rwanda's people together. With help from caring people in the U.S. and elsewhere, Rwandans are starting businesses, growing better crops and seeing a future for themselves and their children.
For additional information, see Rwanda: The Struggle to Recover.
For other questions not answered here, send us an email.
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