Single Parent Economy, Rwanda

Hello, don't know if this is the right place to share but hopefully it fits into the action and activism spirit of things :) Just wanted to introduce an organisation that I set-up last year with a close friend in Rwanda. It's called Tabara (www.tabara.net - there's also a FaceBook group) and it's the first organisation of its kind in the country for single parents. It was born of women helping women. When my friend's husband left her to raise two small children by herself things became very hard. There is no social welfare system here and children literally die for lack of an absent parent sometimes. Unemployment is very high here and when you have a child to look after your chances decrease even further. With no income there's no education and no medical care. If your child gets malaria or other common childhood diseases you have no way to alleviate their suffering. In addition to that, parents who are desperate to work are sometimes taken advantage of, in the case of one member whose only employment involved her working twelve-hour shifts seven days a week, leaving no time with her own children. So we are eager to support single-parent work co-operatives to make sure that those parents who do work don't do so at the expense of child welfare and family life. We set-up the organisation in June last year and last month we became a fully registered NGO with single parent networks throughout the capital city of Kigali. This year, with the help of funding from a school in Canada, we have managed to pay the basic medical insurance for around 80 adults and 150 children. Our key objectives are: 1. Setting-up single parent networks, through which to: 2. Increase child welfare by increasing access to health care, education and other basic rights which low-income families often go without 3. Assist single parent employment by supporting vocational training and single-parent work co-operatives without compromising child welfare (supporting flexible working hours and child care initiatives) 4. Lobbying to make this a government issue and influencing policies which affect the welfare of single-parent families. However our only source of income to date has been through individual and community group donations. We're running on very limited resources and finding it hard to get start-up costs. So I hope nobody minds me posting this here, it's just on the off-chance that anybody out there would like to get involved, either by making a donation or by donating much needed skills such as web design (as you can see, ours could stand a little make-over :) ), assistance with funding proposals or - if you happen to be passing - with skills workshops. Please feel free to forward this to anyone you think might find it interesting. The FaceBook group is at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=81045828168 - you can also e-mail info [at] tabara [dot] net for further information. Best wishes, Marion.