Beauty of Rwanda contacted the ONE Blog through Twitter, and we were intrigued by their beautiful products on their website. Here’s their amazing story:
The hardworking men and women of Rwanda inspired Salha Kaitesi to start her business, Beauty of Rwanda. She came across basket weavers in Rwanda and after talking with them, and she knew they were the ones she wanted to help out the most.
Basket weaving is a skill that many Rwandese women have, passed from one generation to the next. The women are survivors of the Rwandan genocide; and Hutu and Tutsi women have put their differences aside and are weaving baskets to improve their lives and those of their children.
Beauty of Rwanda empowers Rwandese women by selling their handmade crafts. It is not charity, but does promote fair trade. The weavers in rural Rwanda are facing poverty and Beauty of Rwanda is helping them to overcome that.
The women are the bread winners of their families because either their husbands were killed during the genocide or are in prison for the crimes they committed during the genocide. Some are living with HIV and need the income in order to buy essential medicine. Beauty of Rwanda’s aim is to promote socio-economic well-being of vulnerable groups in Rwanda.
Berthé Aissata Touré is a health worker in Mali, where women have an average of six children. In this country’s vast rural areas, childbirth complications are life-threatening. Touré is a frontline health worker, someone who’s often the only link to health care for people who live beyond the reach of hospitals and clinics. Referring her patients to a hospital in cases of hemorrhage isn’t much use — the trip is simply too long. “There is too much time to lose blood on the way,” Touré explains, and in the past “many women were lost.” She received training in a WHO-recommended technique to prevent excessive blood loss and was authorized to administer uterotonic drugs, a critical component of this lifesaving practice.
Calling all students! You may want to listen closely here, because we’re about to announce something pretty big. Major, in fact. Cue Jesse Eisenberg, actor, activist and all-around cool kid:
You heard it here first, folks. ONE is joining forces with Chegg, a leading social education platform for students, in a nationwide search to send eight all-star student advocates on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa. This unique internship program and trip will be an opportunity to become fully immersed in the issues faced by millions living on less than $1.25 a day in sub-Saharan Africa. You will get to experience the fight against extreme poverty and disease from the frontlines -– and come back fully energized to lead your peers as the next generation of advocates on campuses across the country.
We’d like to introduce you to The African Future, an organization devoted to improving the quality of life for the future of Africa. In this piece, founder Abdi-Fatah Ahmed reports on their efforts in Somalia. Follow them on Twitter at @dafricanfuture
We have all seen the figures: 4 million Somalis are directly impacted by the ongoing famine in East Africa; 750,000 are at risk for starvation. We can comprehend that these are not just numbers. They are parents without options, kids without dreams, real people without food to put in their mouths.
Ramesh Ferris, a polio survivor and member of the Rotary Club, reflects on India’s achievement of going one year without polio.
Ramesh with a polio survivor in Afghanistan. While Ramesh was able to receive treatment, not all polio survivors have access to this type of care.
Today, the world marks a milestone in the fight to end polio. India, the place where I was born and contracted the crippling disease as a baby, has gone exactly 12 months without a reported case of polio.
Mandy Slutsker of ACTION discusses a very serious development in the fight against tuberculosis.
Andrew Speaker caused an international incident in 2007 when he boarded an international flight while infected with XDR-TB, a form of tuberculosis resistant to most available drugs. It was terrifying to imagine what could have happened if the flight had taken off. Was there anything scarier than flying next to a person with extensively resistant TB?
Last night, close friends and partners gathered to show some love to activist Janessa Goldbeck during the Cycle for Security San Francisco Launch Party. Headlining the event was Lt. Col Paul Clarke (USAF-Ret.), a Truman National Security Project Fellow, who spoke in detail about how proposed cuts to international development assistance would negatively impact a strong national security strategy.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
