Impact

• Designed and led the implementation of a bespoke, long-term transformative gender action plan across agricultural cooperatives (engaging both men and women) that directly resulted in significant and measurable change in terms of women’s holistic empowerment, (women’s participation, leadership, agency and self-confidence as well as their ability to take control of their financial lives and influence community and household decisions); this work also saw reductions in gender-based violence and improvements in interpersonal dynamics and gender equality between spouses, and resulted in significant follow-on investment from USAID to set precedence for the model and its impact on women’s economic empowerment initiatives

• Increased female participation rate (women and girls) from 10% to 72% over 3 years for Shooting Touch International, by applying a gender transformative mainstreaming approach across multiple touch points within the organization, including development and implementation of bespoke, transformative program models

• Spearheaded the engagement of men and boys as a strategic priority for Girl Effect Rwanda, and championed a gender transformative approach to their work

• Designing and bringing to life Rwanda’s only nationwide gender practitioners’ forum focusing exclusively on the empowerment of adolescent girls, uniting local and international NGOs, UN agencies, private sector, government and civil society, known as the Community of Practice for Girls

• Program design and implementation that resulted in significant improvements in knowledge and attitudes among adolescent girls and boys relating to gender inequality, gender-based violence, victim blaming, sexual and reproductive health, sexual coercion, teen pregnancy prevention and holistic violence resistance education for girls

“The trainings we received about women’s rights and economic violence helped me to solve my issues with my husband. We were separated and he wanted to sell our house (which I built when he was in prison) and all our property, thinking that as a woman I don’t have any rights. After our training, I went and suggested to him that we should divide equally. He kept insisting that it is his inheritance and the local leaders were on his side. When he found that I would not give up, he finally agreed to divide our property and I insisted that I should keep the part where our house is built. After dividing our property he refused to give me the land title but I reported him to RIB and they helped me to get it from him. Now I feel secure with my children and I have understood my rights! No one can scare me anymore.”

- woman, Bugesera, Rwanda

“When the session on Gender-Based Violence and Masculinities started, I was not interested to follow and thought I was wasting my time. In the middle of the session, I realized that it was centred on fostering healthy relationships among couples, and then I paid more attention. I realized that I lived with a lot of wrong prejudices my neighbours and family knew about. No one could oppose what I decided to do. For instance, I mismanaged the harvest and never even kept the seeds for the following farming season. I never cared about my family’s needs. I sold all the beans we harvested and spent the money on alcohol, buying beer for my friends in the pub. My family failed to buy even salt in the small shop. I wore dirty clothes and never cared for my children.

This training session awakened my mind, I realized how my family has suffered because of my behaviour. I realized that it was time for me to look into the future, in the best interest of my family. My wife never believed that I could be the one to help plan for our family, and our children especially. God bless this project because I am back in the right direction in my life.”

- man, Rwamagana, Rwanda

“Before the trainings, I didn’t think I had the right to anything. Not to income, the house, property, making decisions. And because of that, I stayed quiet. But after the trainings, I started talking to my husband, I shared with him about the gender mindset and how it’s created by people and it can be changed, and so I started getting involved in the decisions about our home, money and property management. Another interesting thing for me is that my husband already used to share the load in the home with me, in terms of domestic chores, so our situation there was not as challenging, but sometimes I was even the resistant one, if I found him cooking I would be worried that someone would see him and laugh at us, so I would sometimes discourage him. So these trainings also opened my mind and helped me to change my own mindset around that, as well. The other thing is that we used to use our salaries as we wanted, as individuals, sometimes I would buy clothing for our family, while my husband would buy food – and because of that, we didn’t have a common plan as a family about what to do with our income, so now we put all our money together and we plan for expenses, our financial goals, etc. which has really been an amazing thing for our family.”

- woman, Rwamagana, Rwanda

“If married couples are able to sit together the way I can see you now during this session, please understand that this is not common in the Muslim culture that I have been taught, into which I was born and raised, and married into. Normally, women sit apart to serve and please the men. The session on gender has taught me that we are equal, our difference lies in biological sex only. You all know that my wife and I spent 7 years separated and all my children abandoned me because I was harsh with them. I have never valued my wife’s contributions, I always thought that she could not achieve anything without my support. I used to beat my wife and children every night. My sons decided to go to Kigali to live as street children and later tried to get jobs in order to survive. When I realize that my wife has always been a hard-working person, and when I realize how I would use drugs and abuse her sexually, I feel deeply guilty and ashamed. I have committed all types of gender-based violence. My wife knows all these and I would like to apologize to her today. After this training, I plan to call my children and apologize for not initiating dialogue with them, if something bad happened to them I would feel so much my lack of responsibility.

We lost the last 7 years, we remained behind over 7 years, because I wanted to harm others and remain rigid on my opinions that I believed no one else could contradict. This is not going to happen again because I must value the contribution of my wife and children; we need to build our future and our family. I would like to thank the leader of our cooperative for inviting me and my wife to these sessions. I would like to request that more couples are invited to attend these sessions because they contribute to building strong families, strong communities and strong cooperatives.”

- man, Rwamagana, Rwanda

"I learned how to use my personal voice. My husband has been cheating me and misusing our properties. For a long period of time I didn’t tell anyone what happened to me or what I was going through. He left home and went to live with another wife but in the meantime he wanted to sell our harvest (beans, bananas) yet I am the one who farmed those. He just wanted to sell it because he is the husband. When I refused he went and accused among our families and they convened a meeting. During the family meeting, I just stood up and made it clear that he is not going to sell anything and I am not even going to allow him to return home unless he changes his behaviour. Everyone was shocked because they have never heard me talking. They were used to the old Jeanne who was quiet and who would have accepted anything. I told them that I have learned my rights and I am not going to allow my husband to use violence against me. I and my children have freedom now, and I am teaching other women how to develop themselves."

- woman, Bugesera, Rwanda

“In my family, I was also facing marital rape but I was not aware that it is a type of violence because I believed that as a married wife, you don’t have the right to say no or give excuses. On the other side my husband was also thinking that refusing to have sex with him is disrespecting him. I managed to discuss this with my husband and show all the negative impacts of marital rape. That problem is solved now. As a leader of the village, I have shared what I learned during the ‘parents’ evenings’ and community meetings through what I called “Ikiganiro cy’umuryango” or “Family Discussion time” where we spare time and talk about family issues. I have used this to talk about unpaid care work, marital rape. I also highlighted how men blame women when they don’t get enough vegetable harvest yet they don’t help to water them. Men have changed and 4 of them asked their wives to forgive them and committed to change during the community meeting. Among the couples that were trained, there is a couple that lives in my village. Everyone knew about their conflicts because they are rich (the husband has shops and they sell bananas) but the husband was mistreating the wife and he was very controlling with their income. The wife was unhappy and you could notice that just by looking at her. After the couples training, the husband changed and the wife is now the one who collects the money and they decide together how they should use it, something that had never happened before in their lives. He is now a role model in my village and I use him often when I want to counsel other couples who have conflicts.”

– woman, Bugesera, Rwanda

“Before you trained us, we were really, really scared as women to take part in the leadership of the coop. Even if people mentioned it to us, we always wanted someone else to be nominated instead. Now we have an audit committee that has changed completely, which we voted in ourselves. It used to be two men and one woman, now it’s two women and one man. And people commented to us, saying ‘oh, so now you women want to be leaders, too?’ and we said ‘yes, we do, just get ready.’”

- woman, Rwamagana, Rwanda

“I have been married for 28 years, but for all those years I didn’t have access to my husband’s salary, who is a teacher. Not only did I not know how much he made, my own income was also deposited on his account. After the training, I shared what I learned with my husband. I managed to convince him to add me to our bank account as a signatory. He also showed me other properties (a forest and a piece of land) that I was not even aware of before. I am now using my personal experience and what I learned to train people on economic violence in my community and this has contributed to reducing conflicts between couples.”

- woman, Gicumbi, Rwanda

“We were not confident before the trainings, despite being part of the cooperative leadership, but now we are no longer scared of sharing our ideas. We didn’t know how the cooperative was managed but now we are not scared to go and ask the accountant any details we want. Before, we were scared that he will judge us and take it badly, but we have learned that it is our right to know and to be involved in the cooperative’s management.”

- woman, Gicumbi, Rwanda

“My wife and I are primary school teachers.  We have been married for the last 5 years. I am an ‘opinion leader’ in my community, who pretended to live in harmony with my wife. Since the day we have started these sessions, I realized that I was harming my wife, I was negatively using my power, and this was the source of conflict in our family. I took big decisions alone regarding household property, despite the intervention of my wife. I would not do any household chores, just to justify my supremacy as a man. The new exercises we did in the training about things like the household division of labour and human rights have really inspired me and helped me to realize how much I was harming my wife. Now I have realized that I have to be a partner involved in household activities, a partner who contributes to building healthy relationships with my wife and increases our family income. As of today, I do more work in the home, including bathing my children, fetching water for the home and making the bed.”

- man, Gicumbi, Rwanda

“I used to try to think of ways to solve conflicts for couples, especially men who misuse the money from milk they bring to the coop. After your trainings, I identified couples with mismanagement issues. I started suggesting to them to have two report cards for the milk they bring and separate the income. i.e. the income from the morning (approximately 5 litres will go to the husband’s account) and the afternoon one can go to the wife. After a month, the couples come back and assess how everyone managed their money. At the beginning the men are resistant, but after a while the men start realizing how they often mismanage the money.  After three months with that method, I managed to help 10 couples and they ended up sharing the income more equally, they opted for having one report card and having the wives manage the cooperative income. I also shared this strategy with other women who collect milk in the cooperative.”

- woman, Gicumbi, Rwanda

“This is a very emotional moment for my wife, because she recalls all the harm I have done to the entire family since we were married. Today, in my role as Chairperson, I feel obliged to give a good example, but my past has not been that perfect. You know that we moved here from Kigali where we had a shop and ran various businesses. When we got married, we had a lot of money, and I started to feel proud of the family wealth, which I considered as personal for me. I cheated my wife, and I lied. I was unfaithful to our marriage vows until all the family wealth had disappeared in dishonest arrangements.

Despite all that, my wife never abandoned me, she remained the mother of my children. After losing all our wealth, accepting the current job was the only remaining option for survival. She advised us to move from Kigali City because she wanted to save our marriage. Currently we earn very little, but we live in peace. The sessions on gender and GBV have taught me to value my wife’s opinions and advice because she deserves this respect, she contributes to our family welfare, and to be honest, she saved my life. No one needs to explain to me the consequences of GBV because I have learned a serious lesson in my life and these sessions have come to emphasize what I had realized when I decided to move away from Kigali to this cooperative. My wish is to offer these trainings to more cooperative members. Our cooperative will become stronger if we have strong couples: men and women putting their efforts together, living in equality and enjoying the fruits of their collaboration.”

- man, Rwamagana, Rwanda

“Now as a group of women, we choose someone we trust and she goes with that group for the entire harvest and selling process - from the point of weighing the harvest, to the point of going to the facility where they weigh it again for purchase. Normally, someone goes to weigh the harvest with a businessman (purchaser) and the president, but because our scale is not modern, sometimes when they weigh it again at the facility later on with a modern scale there are more or less kilos than we thought, and the president would sometimes not even tell us this. So we nominated a woman to attend along with the group for this entire process so that we have a witness and some accountability for us as women members. The majority of members of this coop are women, so after the training we thought as a group, ‘this is nonsense, we are not going to allow this’, so we told the president that these are our terms, and if he doesn’t agree, then we will sell our harvest somewhere else, so we took back our power that way.”

- woman, Rwamagana, Rwanda

“Recently, when we were going to measure the harvest, someone brought an old/faulty weighing scale, we didn’t trust it, so we spoke up and said ‘no, bring the one from our coop’ because we trust it, in the past we might have just stayed quiet - but this time we were all present when they weighed it. In the past, the men would go and weigh the harvest alone and we used to think this was something only men could do, that it was too technical for us, but this time we were there, all of us, and so the process was transparent, which it was not in the past.”

– woman, Rwamagana, Rwanda