Rwanda
There are two groups of the Friends of ATD Fourth World, made up of very poor families, in the organisation APROJUMAP (Association pour la Promotion des Jumelages et de l’Amitié entre les Peuples, Association for the Promotion of Twinning and Friendship between Peoples) in the south of Rwanda. One of these has been active in Cyanika since 1991, the other in Kiruhura since 1994. The main aim of these groups is for members to support one another in rejecting a life of dependency and working together to find solutions to poverty. Two mothers in each geographical area have been trained to act as social workers. They visit the people in greatest need. They help them to develop farming activities (agrarian or livestock), to gain access to health treatment, and to send their children to school. They also encourage the families in question to work together. APROJUMAP provides further support for people’s individual and collective efforts in the form of livestock credit, seeds, etc. The members of the Friends of ATD Fourth World meet every month to share their experiences, to decide what forms of communal support to provide to those in greatest need (e.g. agricultural work, repairing or building houses), or to make preparations for the
World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty. These families, who often previously lived by begging, show that it is possible to beat isolation, and that co-operation with the poorest people can form the basis of a reconciliation which encompasses everybody.
