News update

Since the beginning of 2009, Ealing Meeting has been supporting the project 'Growing Together', devised by Elizabeth Cave, working through the Evangelical Friends Church of Rwanda and the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) to increase knowledge and skills about growing and preparing a wider range of nutritious foods, and building community at the same time. Rachel Bugenimana, the wife of Bucura David who visited us in April 2011, continued the work on her own initiative by holding a residential event aimed at teaching these skills to the young people of Gasharu Church, where David is the pastor. Our children have been raising money for this project.

Last autumn (October to November 2011) Elizabeth continued this work. See her programme here.

Elizabeth visited Rwanda in February/March 2011. The trip involved 7 women's workshops and sessions with teachers at two Friends schools.

Elizabeth wrote an illustrated report for QPSW Relief Grants Group Trauma healing and sustainable development for Batwaﾒ, describing her work on sack gardens with groups of  these marginalised people in October 2010. In October and November 2011 she will be training some of those participants to market vegetables and teach the techniques to other Rwandans, raising their nutritional level and their social status.

About Growing Together in Rwanda

Growing Together in Rwanda’ is a project that grew out of a visit to Rwanda by Elizabeth Cave, a member of Ealing Meeting, in 2008. While touring the country as a member of a Friendly Folk Dancers tour, Elizabeth saw at first hand the enormity of the problems confronting the country in the aftermath of the genocide of 1994, when nearly a million people were killed.

Elizabeth felt moved to set up the Growing Together project, which builds on the reconciliation and peace-building programme called HROC (Healing and Rebuilding our Communities). HROC workshops aim to help heal the rift between convicted killers and the families of their victims. These workshops and Elizabeth’s work fall under the auspices of African Great Lakes Initiative or ‘AGLI’, a Quaker organisation based in the Great Lakes region of central Africa. Elizabeth has written about her personal journey – ‘the coming together of disparate elements and events’ – which culminated in the setting up of the project.

Since February 2009 Elizabeth has made four trips to Rwanda, each lasting 4 to 5 weeks, when she has run a number of workshops aimed at encouraging local people to adopt simple, sustainable methods of growing vegetables as a way of raising nutrition levels – she has written a daily blog during these visits.

Elizabeth plans to continue with twice yearly visits until the end of 2012. She has compiled a list of her activities during her previous visits. There are clear aims and outcomes for her October 2010 visit and you can read the interim report about the visit here.

Ealing Friends can get involved in lots of different ways to support her work, ranging from donating memory sticks to researching grants for AGLI.