In 2004 our new president was Marilyn Jarrett and she chose the Send a Cow charity as her chosen International charity for her year of office. To help this charity we headed a group of Rotary Clubs who all sent money off to the Send a Cow charity. Our donation was then matched by Rotary International. We now receive an annual update and here below is our 2007 update which we would like to share with you. A true success story...
The Send a Cow Rwanda (SACR) Rusororo women’s group projects were started in 2004 with 30 women in each of the three groups. The women were living in extreme poverty and in desperate need for the means to provide food and education for their malnourished families. The women are mainly genocide or AIDS widows and many care for orphans as well as their own children.
The aims of the Rusororo Groups were to train households in better farming practices, and educate them in family planning, human rights, gender issues and HIV/AIDS prevention. Appropriate livestock was to be provided to all households in order to boost crop production at least by 2 fold, reduce malnutrition among children as well as providing children with school and living requirements.
All the households have now received their specifically selected livestock, which includes cows, goats and some chickens as well as their essential sustainable organic agriculture training They have increased their income by selling milk, eggs and crops. The training has given them the knowledge of organic farming and animal husbandry, which has enabled them to make a real difference to the productivity of their land. Because of this their lives have changed dramatically.
Another key activity was the passing on of the gift, a process which brings the group members together and extends help to others in need. Every recipient who was given livestock has agreed to “pass on” the equivalent livestock gift, be it cows, goats or poultry, to another farmer. The recipients of pass-on gifts also receive training in preparation for livestock so that they too are able to benefit from increased productivity to overcome poverty. This system has been found to be a wonderful way of building bridges between individuals and communities within a country that was torn apart by genocide.
Mary’s Story
Mary is a genocide widow. Before the war she was married with a loving husband and six children, but sadly she lost her husband and some of her children so that she now has only three children left alive. She is proud to keep a framed photograph of her husband on her wall. She remembers the large herd of cows they had before the war which produced 60-80 litres of milk per day. All her cows were taken from her during the conflict. Mary joined the Rusororo Women’s Group and set up the initial contact with SACR. She met with staff and visited the Gako Organic Farming Training Centre to see what was possible through integrated livestock and organic farming.
She was particularly impressed with the nursery for fodder and vegetable seedlings as Mary could see the importance of plant production for the women in the group who were barely able to grow their crops on their land. Composting manure, organic pesticides and plant teas for returning nutrients to the soil were also exciting to her as most of the land the women were farming was infertile due to mono-cropping and overuse.
Since the war when she lost her cows, milk has been a luxury that Mary could never afford, so her children have suffered from malnutrition. However, now that Mary has a crossbred dairy heifer from SACR, she is able to get 10 litres of milk a day. This means that she has enough to provide her children with milk to drink with enough surplus to sell for income. She usually sells her milk to neighbours who are very grateful to be able to access milk locally. Because of the regular income, Mary is now able to buy household essentials such as salt for cooking, soap for washing and paraffin for light at night, basic things that she could not afford before. Mary’s children used to have to wear the one change of clothes they had until they were rags, but with her extra money she has now been able to buy them new clothes to wear. The children have also been able to go to school as the cow has provided the income to pay for uniform, books and pens for children in primary school and expensive school fees for those in secondary school. The children will now have a good education and may even look forward to going to college or university, something that would have been an unattainable dream before the project. Though Mary is not one to rest, she has plans to improve her house and is now saving up for iron sheets for the roof.
The training Mary received in sustainable organic agriculture has been crucial to increasing her crop production. The key is manure composting. Before the war, when she and her husband owned many cows, Mary didn’t make use of the manure because she didn’t know how to. But after group training, she now knows how to collect manure and urine together with waste green matter and ash, to build a compost heap.
The resulting
compost is applied to her kitchen gardens and land and makes a significant difference to the health of the plants and yields of fruit, vegetables and crops.
Mary has been blessed with a heifer calf which she is taking care of until it is old enough to be passed on to another needy woman farmer. Mary and her children are now on an upward cycle out of poverty and thanks to your help can look forward to a positive and hopeful future.
Update on the Rusororo Projects in Rwanda