November 2012
A Teacher's Story
Singer sewing machines click and spin in the one-room Gashora Sewing School. Teacher Clementine Abedi sits at her machine in the corner, pedaling evenly to make a patchwork shoulder bag from scraps of bright African fabrics.
Like their teacher, the students have lost one or both parents; yet an uplifting sense of community pervades the dim, quiet room.
"We feel like a family," says Clementine, who views the students as her children. She visits them outside of the sewing program, especially if they get sick. "I want to keep helping them, taking care of them, because God gave me a gift for teaching."
During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Clementine's family lived in Nyamirambo, a neighborhood in Kigali that was mostly Hutu. Her neighbors would warn her family when the militias were coming to kill, and they would hide.
Finally in July, the Rwandan Patriotic Front reached Clementine's neighborhood. They told Clementine and her family to go to Hôtel des Mille Collines, where they and over a thousand other Rwandans would find safety. Sadly, on the way to the hotel, the family got separated and Clementine's mother was killed.
Clementine has a hearing impairment, and instead of going to secondary school she studied at Speak I'm Listening, a trade school for women whose parents were killed in the genocide. They loved her, occasionally gave her jobs, and taught her how to sew shoulder bags. When Speak I'm Listeninglearned that Rwanda Partners needed a teacher for their Gashora Sewing School, the director recommended Clementine.
Gashora Sewing School
As Clementine and her students know, the most effective way to help people overcome poverty is to enable them to become self-supporting. The best way to do that is to provide them with the skills necessary for employment. This is why in May 2011 Charis International partnered with Rwanda Partners to train fifteen of the most vulnerable, under-served orphans living in the rural area of Gashora, Rwanda. We are happy to report that all have graduated from the tailoring training program and are gainfully employed sewing handbags and shoulder bags as part of an income generating, self-sustaining cooperative.
Rwanda Partners is in the process of selecting fifteen more vulnerable youth who each represent an orphan-headed household in Gashora. These young men and women will be given the training and skills to succeed against the odds in Rwanda.
Our hope is to contribute $5000 to lease classroom space and provide such things as new sewing machines, daily lunches, and teaching materials. This income-generating project is self-sustaining after the initial start-up costs.
St. John's School Update
With your help we were able to send funds to St. John's School in India to build a wall to keep out the cobras and new toilets for the school.
Thank you. We wish you every blessing of the Christmas season.
Sincerely,
Alec D. Brooks, President
