By Nancy Zeller | Founder
Our Founder and Creative Director, Nancy, just returned from Rwanda where she worked on further training with our Umva dyers and shop manager. They held multiple team meetings to discuss challenges, new dye techniques, business practices, progress, and where they hope to be in the next 12 months as the boutique continues to grow. Our organization is applying for a grant through Rotary International and Nancy and Grace, one of our board members, conducted community assessment surveys with women in the town of Musanze, gathering insight and perspective on what concerns and challenges they face in their day to day lives. This information will be an integral part of the grant application focusing on long term expansion of the Umva project including adding qualified staff to help us reach new retail outlets, more raw materials so we can offer more product, and ongoing dye training, ultimately enabling us to hire more women who will be able to earn income from their craft.
Nancy trained the Umva dyers on new dye techniques that reduce water usage and heat consumption during the dye process. These techniques benefit the environment and reduce the costs required to create quality products. In addition to the scarves, the dyers have created beautiful camisoles, headbands, and pillows to sell.
We are delighted to be working with our first Rwanda-based lodge, Heaven/The Retreat in Kigali, where the Umva products will be available for sale in their boutique. We hope this is the beginning of more Rwanda based retail outlets as we continue to grow and reach new markets.
We still await approval of our local Rwanda NGO application that will secure our efforts within Rwanda. We hope and trust we will have final approval in 2024.
NONE of this would be possible without your generous support of our efforts and we are so grateful. We cannot say often enough how much we appreciate your confidence in us as we pursue this significant and strategic step forward on behalf of the families we serve. Murakoze cyane - which means "thank you very much" in Kinyarwanda.
By Jennie Norman | Board Chair
By Nancy Zeller | Founder
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