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American Knitter Turns Dream into Reality for Women in Rwanda

April 24, 2007 |

“Making beautiful things lifts the spirit and offers hope, and in Rwanda I really saw it happen,” says Cari Clement, an American woman from the state of Vermont who helps African women in Rwanda rebuild their lives by providing machines they use for knitting products for export and domestic sale.

The only fact most Americans know about Rwanda is the genocide that happened there in 1994. But Clement knows it as a beautiful country with intelligent, energetic, smiling women eager to work and support themselves and their families.

Her dream of helping these women through knitting led her to develop a program called Rwanda Knits in 2003.

“The initial donation was of 60 (knitting) machines, accessories and training,” she says. “These went to the refugee camps and were donated through UNHCR (Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees). On my second trip over, in January 2004, we brought an additional 30 machines, which were donated to AVEGA (an association of widows from the genocide) and AVVAIS (an association of widows affected by AIDS). This comprises the 90 machines, which were donated within the first year,” she told the Washington File in a telephone interview.

Before Rwanda Knits, most of these women and their teachers were subsistence farmers, dependent on help from family or friends or lived in refugee camps and most of them were either widowed by the genocide or the AIDS epidemic. Rwanda Knits focuses on helping women do not have a reliable source of income, those making less than $1 per day. Since 2005, the teachers have earned from $850 to $570 from both teaching and making items for export.

Clement says her best experience was in January 2004, “when, accompanied by my 27-year-old daughter, Naima, I returned to the Kiziba refugee camp’s women’s center. Before we left the U.S., I had continually asked UNHCR if the women had learned the machines and if they were knitting because I had made a significant commitment that they would be able to produce 500 scarves in two weeks for us to put into gift bags for Grammy (an award honoring recording industry achievement) recipients. They really couldn’t tell me, but they thought the women had been knitting a bit.

Clement said she and her daughter were apprehensive when they entered the center not knowing if the women had learned to use the machines yet. But the two were greeted with singing and dancing and walls lined with products the women had produced. “The women made 650 scarves in five days,” she said.

Over the past 30 months, Clement has worked with about 400 women in Rwanda. The USAID grant will expand her organization’s reach to more than 1,000 women.

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  1. American Knitter Turns Dream into Reality for Women in Rwanda · Craft Gossip :: Craft Blog Network on February 1, 2008 1:55 am

    [...] Read the full post: American Knitter Turns Dream into Reality for Women in Rwanda [...]

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