We are excited to officially share this BIG news with you our friends, supporters and partners. The Lord God we are serving is working and is expanding our work, helping us to go beyond our own limitations as we serve those in need. We are grateful.

Our Encourage Mother’s program has grown big.

We have been praying, working, reaching out to our supporters on ways to empower women in Lac Vert with life skills, as a way for us to move to the next level. Since its start, we have been mostly dealing with our counseling work, providing a safe space for healing conversations. Over 40 women, many of them being the mothers of our sponsored students through Rudi Education, are attending weekly Bible-based counseling sessions.

Because at Rudi International we believe in a holistic approach to helping those in need, we are happy to tell you that a small portion of your sponsorship donation is allocated to these trauma-healing and related activities. When you sponsor a student through our education program, you are contributing to improving his or her family environment.

Through our partnership with Linked Through Love Foundation, a Canadian-based sister organization, we are able to move to a next step, which is a big one. A SEWING project has kicked off in Goma this June, at our new offices. Ten (10) out of the Encourage Mothers women have been selected to be trained in sewing skills for 10 months.

At the end of this program, these women will be able to start small sewing businesses and earn additional income that will lead to a more sustainable financial situation. We need them to be able to provide for the needs of their families. We want the students we are sponsoring for education to be able to have food, shelter and their basic needs be covered in order to perform well at school.

There is a common saying in the Democratic Republic of Congo: “When you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation”. It is true and we are working on this.

The rest of the group will keep with their weekly meetings. Another group of them will be chosen to undertake the same program as the second class.

Read full blog post from our partner’s website explaining this project and consider donating today to fund the next phases of this project:

Objectives:

The sewing project’s main objective is to provide these women with income generating activities appropriate to the skills being learned, making them self-sufficient. Phase 1-3 will focus on learning new sewing skills and working on sewing projects, including making school uniforms. This not only provides an avenue to learn and practice the skills, but provides new uniforms for the education program so that funds donated and allocated to buying school uniforms can be reassigned towards sponsoring more children or be used for the betterment of the Encourage Mothers – Renew Hope program. During the phase 4 practicum, women will focus on specific projects designed to be sold to the public to help generate income for the programs expenses. 

Thank you.