Hello, and welcome to Rusizi! My name is UTAMULIZA Vestine, and I am the Coordinator of AVEGA Western Region.

I have been working here as the coordinator of AVEGA Western Region since August 2008. In my time here I have witnessed many positive changes, and I look forward to continuing to support the vulnerable widows and orphans in our communities.

To contact me, email utamulizave@yahoo.fr or call (+250) 0788 777 299.

AVEGA Western Region is an independent regional office of AVEGA Agahozo.

The western regional office is located in the city of Rusizi on the southeastern edge of Lake Kivu, surrounded by rolling hills of tea plantations and individual farming communities. Our members and beneficiaries are 3,893 genocide widows and orphans who live in the neighboring districts of Rusizi, Nyamasheke, Karongi, Rubavu, Rutsiro, Nyabihu, and Ngororero.

AVEGA Western Region was created when AVEGA Agahozo decentralized in 2002. Since then, we have worked tirelessly to improve the quality of life of our members – physically, psychologically, socially, economically, and legally. To achieve this goal, AVEGA Western Region frames its work within the four branches of AVEGA’s mission:

1. Psychosocial and Medical Care
2. Socio-Economic Development
3. Advocacy, Justice and Information
4. Institutional Capacity Building

Psychological and Medical Care:

We seek to serve the medical and psychological needs of our members and beneficiaries, who are often among the most vulnerable members of their communities. All have lost husbands and other family members, many have contracted HIV/AIDS as a result of rape during the genocide, and almost all experienced or witnessed brutal violence in 1994. This has left many with both physical and mental wounds.

AVEGA Western Region encourages all its members to undergo voluntary testing for HIV/AIDS; unfortunately, about 70% of those tested are positive. However, given the widespread availability of antiretroviral drugs and improved district health services, we offer a special focus on the psychological needs of those it serves. The office employs a full time trauma counselor who conducts group and individual counseling on the ground with AVEGA members, as well as individual long-term counseling in the AVEGA office. Through this personalized process, AVEGA members and beneficiaries are able to manage and overcome the trauma that debilitates them, allowing them to re-enter society through family, work, or school. AVEGA Western Region has also trained 136 community psycho-social workers who interact with AVEGA community members at the sector level. These workers offer trauma counseling, assist with the psychological issues that arose through the process of gacaca, and guide the most severe cases toward specialized institutions.

Socio-Economic Development:

Poverty deepens the psychological problems that burden AVEGA members and beneficiaries. For this reason, AVEGA Western Region engages in a variety of social and economic aid.

Social assistance programs that AVEGA Western Region has completed include:

1. building 600 homes for members without secure housing
2. supplying over 200 children with school materials
3. offering agricultural education to orphans
4. providing 400 goats to needy widows

We also encourage our members and beneficiaries to form smallcooperatives who engage in income generation activities in order to provide both mutual economic security and psychological support to the cooperative’s participants. So far, 90% of AVEGA Western Region’s members belong to a cooperative. We employ a full time community development worker who supports the women’s cooperatives with counseling on business planning and management. AVEGA helps the cooperatives access funding through grants, subsidized loans, and micro-finance.

We particularly thank a number of our funders for their assistance in this area: Survivors Fund (SURF), Rwanda Group Trust (RGT), CARITAS, l’Embassade de France, and the Rwandan government at the national, regional and district level.

Advocacy, Justice and Information:

The members and beneficiaries of AVEGA Agahozo are also aided by various programs that engage in advocacy, access to justice, and awareness-raising.

Members can look to AVEGA Agahozo to advocate for them with their government officials at all levels and to make their voices heard in civil society meetings and district committee meetings. The Western office has trained 194 paralegals who advise and accompany members as they pursue their justice complaints in court, helping them to improve their security and reduce vulnerability. Members were also advised on how to conduct their cases in local gacaca courts and how to give testimony.

We are also particularly active during the national mourning period from April 7-June 3, when the country commemorates the genocide in 1994. During this time AVEGA Western Region takes members to memorial sites and ceremonies in the region and distributes information about the genocide on the radio, television, and in print media.

Institutional Capacity Building:

AVEGA Western Region is fortunate to have built its own office building. It complements this infrastructure with staff training in the best use of technology and sensitivity to trauma in order to best welcome members and beneficiaries to its office.

Learn about some of our projects:

Meet the women of the Twisungane cooperative, located in the village of Rugande. Together these widows raise their five cows, whose milk they sell at the market.

The project began in 2008, when AVEGA Agahozo transmitted the women’s idea to FARG (Fonds National pour l’Assistance aux Rescapés du Génocide, or the Victims of Genocide Fund). With the grant money they received, the AVEGA members built stables, cultivated fodder, and began buying cows and fields. AVEGA’s community development worker visits them monthly, offering advice and support.

Because of the money they make from selling the milk, the women are able to pay their cowherd and veterinary costs, as well as save some for special circumstances like a funeral or the wedding of a child.

The cooperative has supported us – it has rescued us from our loneliness. We now have property, while other women who are not part of cooperatives are not as proper or organized as we are.  Because of the cooperative, we can buy clothes, can help a sister who is troubled, can support each other at a time of loss, and can celebrate together at a marriage or at the birth of a child. It is good! We are respected. We are part of Vision 2020, developing ourselves and our country.

We had cows before the genocide, but then we lost everything. AVEGA has allowed us to drink milk again! We are overjoyed to have AVEGA as our mother, who keeps us from being alone in solitude.

Since 2008, the women have run a milk production cooperative, raising five cows among them. They sell the milk at the market, and use the manure to fertilize their fields. Thanks to the cooperative, their fields are more productive and they gain money at the market that they are able to save in a common account. From that account, after paying the cowherds, they are able to sustain the extra expenses of five of their children living away at school – four at university, one at secondary school.

The cooperative’s business initiative was made possible by the generous donation of FARG. AVEGA Western Region’s community development worker supports them with suggestions for modern agriculture and business management.

This is Félicité, Madame la Présidente of AVEGA Rusizi district and the president of her own small cooperative.

Six other women join Félicité in her cooperative, in which they raise cows and sell the milk. They began the project in 2008, when they received a grant from FARG through AVEGA. They maintain a common account at the bank. In order to make a withdrawal, they convene at a meeting to decide how to share the funds – whether to assist a cooperative member with a problem, to pay a child’s school fees, to buy new clothing, or other basic necessities.

With the cooperative, we are no longer poor like before. There are still problems, but thanks to the manure our fields are much more productive – instead of 1 kilo, we get 70 kilos! We all meet often to share news and discuss our problems. Thanks to the cooperative, we have learned to work, and to not waste time or money. We have many responsibilities now. We must take care of the cows, survey the cowherds, buy the fodder for the cows. Now people respect us because we have accomplished something. People need us now – before we were wholly vulnerable, but now people come to us for milk or for help. Even men are jealous of our group of women!

The cooperative of Ikizeri translates to “The Hope Cooperative”. The project has indeed given hope to these ten AVEGA widows and one male partner. As one woman explained, “We had the idea to create work for ourselves because after the genocide, we didn’t want to be beggars on the streets.”

In 2009, the cooperative decided to plant banana trees. In about a year, they were producing fruit. The women believe banana plantations are a good business plan because they are so widely used, and because one can make use of the whole product. In the past year, they’ve made enough to expand the farm and buy themselves new clothing.

The president of the cooperative is also a community psycho-social worker, trained by AVEGA. She is available to her sisters at times of crisis and trauma. She has also been learning modern agriculture for two years from a group financed by the district, knowledge which she then brings back to her cooperative’s banana plantation.

The cooperative’s next goal will be to buy a cow: it produces a better fertilizer than any chemical they could buy, they say. To help them afford a cow

Before AVEGA, we were trapped in isolation, grief, and trauma. We were stigmatized. Then AVEGA found us, consoled us, and helped us form groups. AVEGA Agahozo lives up to its name, AVEGA of Solace – AVEGA made us people of value, as if we were not survivors of genocide.

Click here to view STATISTICS OF AVEGA MEMBERS AVEGA WEST