Doughnuts and making life sweeter for Honorine
‘The church has helped us to get out of loneliness,’ says Honorine.
She is a woman who has been living with a disability for 31 years. And for her, the isolation was possibly the most painful part of her situation.
‘We didn’t have a good life before,’ she explains. ‘We had no support. Some of us were afraid of leaving home.’
Being so isolated had financial consequences too. It’s hard to earn a living when circumstances make leaving your house a frightening ordeal.
Now Honorine belongs to a self-help group* set up through her local church as part of Tearfund’s work.
The group has saved money together and is using some of it to run a small business selling tea and doughnuts.
‘We meet twice a month to save money together,’ she tells us. ‘The money left over from the self-help groups is taken to the bank to be saved and then used to help people who need it – for example, to pay school fees or medical bills or to buy food. Some groups have set up small businesses, such as selling vegetables.
‘We are so thankful for the support to get us out of loneliness and come into a community to develop ourselves.’
Rights, value and a voice
s the women find their place in these groups and through this work, they are able to grow in a sense of belonging and self-confidence. And that helps them begin to understand that they have rights and a voice.
They are able to feel that they are loved – in exactly the way Jesus taught us to love. It’s why this work is such a natural fit for the church. At the heart of it is the simplest, and most powerful, message of our faith. Loving God and loving one another. And doing that practically.
Healing from trauma
Over the past year, Tearfund’s work with the Kigali Diocese has included reaching 250 women with disabilities with trauma-healing counselling, financial literacy and vocational training, such as sewing, tailoring and hairdressing, along with access to finance through micro-loans, as well as life skills training – especially around awareness of personal rights and sexual and reproductive health and protection.
These activities have enabled the women to launch businesses, improve their self-esteem, become healthier and more resilient, and become leaders in their families and communities.
Bringing the community along in the change
Alongside this, work was also done to help change some of the harmful ways communities were thinking about and behaving toward women living with disabilities.
Across six parishes, 40 local leaders were signed up to be at the forefront of speaking out against sexual and gender-based violence against them, and to address the stigma that communities were attaching to them.
Since this input, there are encouraging stories of parents who used to keep their daughters who had disabilities hidden because they were ashamed of them, who have now started to love and take care of them well, finally seeing them as having equal worth to other family members.
A ripple of good
And the positive impacts of this programme are creating even more good as people pass on the skills and value they have learnt to others.
For example, in one self-help group, a woman with excellent knitting skills has started teaching others to knit too, sharing her skills and putting her in a position of being a mentor for the women around her.
If you’d like to give to help make more of this kind of work possible, please do so here.
*What is a self-help group?
Self-help groups are often set up as part of Tearfund’s Transforming Communities work (CCT). They are usually run through a local church and facilitated by someone who has been trained by Tearfund to do so.
The groups are made up of community members who have been invited to join – often because they are facing some sort of challenge.
Meetings are held regularly, and often include a time of prayer and a Bible-based teaching with a practical application which helps the group consider together the resources they have available to them and find solutions to challenges they and their communities are facing.
The group also saves money together, with each member committing to contribute a specific amount each time. This money is then pooled and used by the members to provide easy-to-repay loans to each other so that they have capital to start small businesses or income-generating activities, or to do vital things like pay school fees or medical bills.
The group members provide a supportive environment for each other – financially, emotionally and spiritually, and work together to achieve the outcomes they need to change their circumstances for the better.
