Dyeing For Peace in Rwanda

After months of careful planning and painstaking preparations by founder and Executive Director Nancy Zeller and our Board members, we opened a small retail shop in Musanze in April of this year. Our objective is for our dyers to have a safe place to work together and to offer the beautiful Umva textile products to tourists and other shoppers in Rwanda, rather than relying solely on sales in the US. We were lucky to find a space in Musanze Arts Studio Hub Adventure, or MASHA, a shared arts and crafts studio highlighting the work of Rwandans like our women dyers. 

As part of this major strategic effort, we are in the process of applying for Rwandan NGO status. This important step is part of our longer term plan for assuring the continuity of Rwanda-one4one into the future. It has been and continues to be quite a learning experience for us and for our dyers, but we are committed to making this a success! Of course none of this would be possible without your generous support of our efforts and we are so grateful.

Nancy (also our creative director!) is preparing to go back to Rwanda in September to provide additional training to our dyers and shop manager in advanced dye techniques, merchandising, and small business management. As a successful enterpreneur, Nancy is ideally suited for this mission. Of course she will also meet with the families we support as well as with our Rwandan Board member and will work to build connections with other community groups and potential retail outlets.

We cannot say often enough how much we appreciate your confidence in us as we pursue this significant step forward on behalf of the families we serve.

Onward!