Christmas 2022 with Helene’s children! A happy day at the Early Child Development center in Bushaka/Boneza with Helene’s children.
If you have been following my posts recently, you know I have started being involved the community living around our coffee farm now that I can finally travel back home.
I visited the NYAMABUYE Early child development daycare in Bushaka, the sector where our CWS is located in November 2022 and was moved by what Helene Twagirayezu is doing.
Four days a week, between 7 am and 12, she hosts 32 children in her small house (which I later found out, my father helped her build after the genocide against the Tutsis during which she lost her piece of land and home), feeds them breakfast, bathes them and tells them stories from the only book in Kinyarwanda she was given herself.
Stories like this are many all over the rural areas in Rwanda and we want to start making a difference in our area so that the mothers can go to work knowing that their beautiful children are well taken care of, educated and fed. (read the full story here : ECD in Bushaka/Boneza – Kawah Coffee (kawah-rwanda.com)).
I have since put it at heart to help in any way that I could, be it by allocating part of the sales that will be made in 2023 or volunteering some time to spend with the children every time I am at the farm.
During a family trip over Christmas 2022, my family and some friends put together some funds to buy toys and games, drinking cups, cooking pots and we took our children to spend half a day with the children at the ECD. Most of them hadn’t seen toys at all and it was such a humbling experience for us but mostly for our own children who were then happy to teach them how to use them. I am convinced this will be an unforgettable Christmas for all of them!
For my next trip, I would like to collect some coloring and reading books as well as some stationery for the ECD kids to learn from, so if you are keen to be a part of this, please send me a message and I will connect with you.
Happy New Year to you all, “Drink coffee and so good!”
