Christine Dusabemariya, Basketmaker

Jyambere Mutegarugori means Women in Development in  Kinyarwandan, the official language of Rwanda. This group of 93 women is located in the western Rwandan village of Muramba, an area gravely affected by the genocide of 1994. After the genocide in which 34 of 36 of its local priests were killed, Muramba’s Nyondo diocese went without a priest for 6 years. Father Musinguzi John Bosco, a young Ugandan seminary graduate and engineer, felt a calling to serve the people of Rwanda, and was assigned to Muramba in 2000. In this subsistence farming community of 97,000, the people were suffering from poverty, the effects of war including the genocide and an ensuing civil conflict, and  HIV/AIDS. Father Musinguzi reached out to the international community for help in providing care for thousands of orphans, widows, the disabled, and young people without hope.  With the help of the Kolping Society in Germany and Engineers without Borders in the U.S., a vocational school has been built, wells have been dug, providing clean water to the village, an orphanage was built, an AIDS Education program was initiated, and the widows organized themselves into several income-generating units, including a basket making cooperative.