Bpeace in Rwanda

Leiny and her cleaning staff.

Cari, Geofrey and Julia visited 3 groups that are recipients of knitting machines, including The Village of Hope, which is part of the Rwanda Women’s Network. They’re all up and knitting.

Meanwhile the hunt for the money in Rwanda was on. Marla, Sabra, and Richard met with Dieudonné Murekezi, Technical Director of Banques Populaires – a credit union with 9 banks in Kigali and many more throughout the country. Bank Populaire provides members with business loans as well as building, health, school fees and short term emergency loans. Bank Populaires is special in that it created a branch for women only.

Then, Richard and Marla met with John Taylor, Managing Director of Fina Bank. Fina Bank’s mission is to promote SME(Small and Medium Enterprises) development with a focus on socially conscious business with an impact on development. Our kind of bank. Currently, Fina Bank is stressing leasing for SME development since collateral requirements are less strict. Richard is going to arrange for the head of leasing to make a presentation to the associates. Stay tuned as Marla continues her quest to get an overview of the financial sector in Rwanda.

Selma, Manny and Loretta visited Lenuald (Leiny) Munyakazi's business that sells cleaning products and provides cleaning services to individuals and institutions. Her business, GiEmeJes, is named after her three young children who died in the genocide. Leiny loves her work and teaching her staff how to clean professionally. She recently won a one year contract to clean a big new apartment complex built by a Rwandan insurance company. She will be able to leverage this relationship to increase her corporate cleaning contracts and ultimately make her own cleaning products.

Anne met with Arleen Seed and Louise, her on the ground coordinator, to discuss potential ways to support our respective work in Rwanda and opportunities for grants for our women.

We ended the evening with a team dinner with the US Ambassador to Rwanda, Michael Arietti and the Economic/Commercial Officer Daniel Stoian.