Stories of Hope: Huye District Co-op
Huye District Co-op members working at their coffee plantation.
Six Working Groups have formed a co-op in the Huye District of Rwanda. A total of 87 child-headed families participate. They requested and received about 5.5 acres of land from the government for a coffee plantation and began working together, nurturing coffee seedlings.
A government official assigned to work alongside this ZOE project reports that their harvest in the spring of 2010 will earn around $10,000.
Rev. Greg Jenks wrote about his visit to this project:
I immediately started doing the math in my mind and got tremendously excited. That meant that beginning in 2010, each family would receive an additional $115 per year. Although that doesn’t sound like much, that is a huge influx of capital for these young people. My mind began imagining the additional seed they could purchase, animals they could obtain, and expansion that would be possible for the income-generating activities in which ZOE has trained the orphans.
The children, however, have a different vision. When I met with them, the Leader of the co-op introduced me to orphans in the community who his Group had identified and “adopted” on their own. This young Leader said, “We will share anything we have.” Then he spoke about the coffee plantation:
“We’ve already decided what we are going to do with the proceeds. Fifty percent will be divided among the families in the co-op. But we are going to use the other fifty percent to assist orphans who are not receiving any support.”