Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Three Thousand Words.




With apologies for the greenish light that prevails inside our plastic sheeted classroom, here are three training session photos which I hope will explain a great deal about what we are doing with our Income Generation Program at Nyabiheke Camp.

The white board depicts the “Circle Training” concept that we are using to help our IGP participants to think about the whole cycle of acquiring materials, making a product (in this case, soap), allocating income and profit among many possible uses, and deciding how rapidly they can afford to expand their businesses.

In the next photo you see one of our IGP Refugee Assistants, Riziki, explaining the program to a group of elderly women while IGP Coordinator Louise Bodji looks on. Riziki is an amazingly strong woman—both emotionally and physically—who works all day each day with our program, then at 5:00 hoists a bucket of tomatoes to balance on top of her head (no hands, thank you) and goes off to the market to sell.

Finally, there is a photo of a group of women who attended one of the orientation sessions for vulnerable persons and decided to form a group together.

I wish that all of you could be here for just one of these training sessions to experience for yourself the energy, the excitement, and the appreciation that is so evident in everyone. Thank you, merci, murakoze from us all.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is fantastic. Thank you for posting these images of your work and the people who benefit from it. The commerce seems so simple, yet as your example of selling a cow illustrates, the concept is a world away. Bless you.

kje