‘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 three 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 visit planned for October 2010.

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