Project Trip 2009
I cannot believe it has already been a year since our last team project trip for the Koinonia Foundation. These trips are a lot of work, but they are also incredibly rewarding. We were not even going to set up a team trip this year, but the opportunities for helping just kept coming our way, so plans changed and we have a group of ten people going to Kigali, Rwanda this month.
What are we going to do on this trip? More than we had planned on. First and foremost is to get the Beacon Program pilot project off the ground. At this point in time, we have five cooperatives of women with 7-11 women in each cooperative. Most have been given basic business training in sales, budgeting, accounting, etc. We are ready to grant each of the cooperatives their 36 K-Lights, but we are held up on the registrations with the government (we stipulate the the cooperatives be registered so that the women have ownership of their business and complete control of their profits). So, we will check on the progress of this and hopefully form more cooperatives while we are in Rwanda.
We will also be focused on future trips. Inspections of sites for possible solar installs and Wall of Words library set-ups are high on our priority lists. We are hopeful that we will have plenty of sites lined up and will be able to start fundraising with exact goals in mind.
We also need to finish the Shyara School. This is the school that we set up with a solar system and library last year. There was a problem with the shipment of the actual lights last year, so now we can get back out there and light up the school.
Overall, we are excited about the possibilities of this upcoming trip. Everyone who is going adds so much to the group. I know we are going to accomplish what we have set up, as well as many other things that we don’t even know about yet. That’s the way it always happens…
Andrew Williams, President
