MRI Executive Director, Steven Botkin visits a coffee cooperative in rural Rwanda

Back in Rwanda

July 1, 2009

After the long plane journey (through Detroit, Amsterdam and Entebbe), I arrived late last night in Kigali. Fidel and his wife, Christine, greeted me at the airport with big smiles and warm embraces. The lights of the city draped over the hills also welcomed me back.

It was only three years ago that Fidel Rutayisire, a young human rights activist, inspired by the Men’s Resources International website, sent us the following email:

“I really appreciate your great work and I am ready to work with you in order to achieve your noble mission. I am a human right activist, Rwandan by nationality and I want to join you. The purpose of this communication is to request you whether I can represent you in Rwanda.” 

With encouragement from MRI, Fidel recruited other men to serve as the steering committee for the formation of the Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre (RWAMREC). They moved quickly to write a constitution and become recognized as a formal organization.

In November 2006, MRI sponsored Fidel to attend the Engaging Men in Eliminating Gender-Based Violence training we were conducting in Nigeria. [Read blog entries from Nigeria training here.] At the end of the three days, he stood and proclaimed, we must have this training in Rwanda!

Ten months later, James and I (along with our colleague, Adin Thayer) were in Kigali conducting the first MRI training in Rwanda for a group of 30 men and women members of RWAMREC. A year after that, MRI and RWAMREC collaborated on providing a similar training for rural coffee farmers, women and men who were members of a coffee cooperative called COOPAC. [Read blog entries here.] Supported in part by Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee , and accompanied founder and president, Dean Cycon, the experience demonstrated the power of this training and the value of these collaborations.

Based on these experiences, RWAMREC is now part of a four country study (Rwanda, Brazil, India and Chile) of the implementation and impacts of male engagement programs funded by the United Nations Trust Fund. In Rwanda the program is focusing on expanding the work with more coffee cooperatives, and MRI is providing training and technical assistance for this project.

In a very short time, the Rwanda Men’s Resource Centre, with Fidel’s leadership and support from MRI, has become a leading organization nationally and an international role model in this field. In January 2008 RWAMREC launched an online petition to show that men around the world are ready to publicly denounce the ongoing gender-based violence occurring in Kenya during the post-election violence. In June 2008 RWAMREC, with support from the United Nations Development Program, convened a meeting of organizations in Rwanda interested in engaging men where a national network was formed, an action plan was developed, and RWAMREC was elected as the first secretariat. 

So, now I am back in Rwanda for the third time. (On this trip, I’m alone). RWAMREC has adapted the MRI training and conducted it with two other coffee cooperatives. Beginning tomorrow I will attend a training with farmers from yet another cooperative. The MRI training handbook has been translated into Kinyarwanda (the indigenous language), and I look forward to seeing the program when James and I are not facilitating.

In connection,
Steven Botkin

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