Mandate eNewsletter, 2008 - Issue No. 3

Learning in Rwanda: Connecting Theory with Practice
by Will Kendall

Sitting in the shade of a tin-roofed mud hut, Rosalie strikes the figure of one who has witnessed many things; her smile reveals the wrinkles of both age and toil. The widowed mother of five, Rosalie’s right arm hangs limp due to a bullet that pierced her flesh during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Rosalie knows a lot about suffering and hardship, but this is not what she chooses to share with me early this July morning. Instead, she speaks about hope and empowerment, of reconciliation and provision. Rosalie is a member of one of many savings and credit associations (SCAs) promoted by the Anglican Church of Rwanda in partnership with HOPE International and the Chalmers Center for Economic Development. Rosalie now refers to her life as either “before I joined the savings group” or “after I joined the savings group.” This simple organization of Rosalie and approximately twenty of her neighbors enables them to meet and save money together and to lend their money to group members at low interest rates, thereby enabling them to earn a small return on their savings. In the end, however, Rosalie and her fellow group members have much more than just a means to save money and to earn a small return. Her new “family,” as she refers to the other group members, share resources, advice, prayer, and labor; these group members have discovered what it means to “love their neighbor.” A most striking example of this is the account of Rosalie’s SCA deciding to use their own money to pay for her extremely intelligent son to attend secondary school, an opportunity that would have otherwise proven impossible.

Rosalie’s story is just one of many that I had the privilege to hear about this summer during my required research internship as part of the Community Development major at Covenant College. My internship was based in Kigali, Rwanda, and I was able to meet with many SCAs as well as with pastors and teachers as I tried to learn how these SCAs were impacting the lives of their group members. The story I heard again and again was how this simple method of bringing community members together to save could have such expansive holistic implications, reaching far beyond the basic economic function around which the group was formed. I was elated to hear again and again how the members of the community I studied were learning to pray, to see God as their provider, and to understand the implications of their being created in the image of God. As a fourth year student of Economics and Community Development at Covenant College, I found it remarkably fulfilling to get to see and apply the concepts, education, and training that I have received for the previous three years in my courses at Covenant. The opportunity to meet with the members of many different Anglican-sponsored SCAs was like a dream come true, as I could finally observe face-to-face what I had spent so much time reading and hearing about back on top of Lookout Mountain.

This past summer a total of 18 Community Development students went on required research internships all across the globe, many of these arranged through connections developed by the Chalmers Center. In my particular case, I was able to work under the auspices of Mrs. Malu Garcia, who was previously employed by the Chalmers Center and continues to collaborate with the Center as a member of the Center’s Global Fellowship of Trainers. Malu is helping to equip the Anglican Church of Rwanda to use the Chalmers Center’s materials to promote SCAs throughout the country. I was privileged to attend several trainings that Malu hosted to equip Anglican pastors and lay leaders on a basic biblical view of poverty and microfinance. These trainings really made me feel like my education had come full circle, because I was able to see the pastors and lay leaders have the same excitement and passion that I recall feeling as I sat through the early courses of the Community Development major at Covenant. Seeing the same diagrams that had been used to teach me about poverty at Covenant being translated into Kinyarwandan, the native language of Rwanda, was so encouraging to me, as many of these concepts have shaped the way I look at poverty and at my role as a Christian in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in both word and deed.

It also made quite an impression on me to hear and see the large scale on which the Anglican Church of Rwanda is pursuing the promotion of these SCAs. 3,000 copies of the Chalmers Center’s materials are being distributed to churches across the country with the goal of starting 9,000 new SCAs, reaching approximately 80,000 households and impacting 400,000 individuals by the end of the year.  There is enormous potential for these church-centered groups to minister to a major portion of Rwanda’s population.

My summer internship also helped me to understand more deeply the nature of my professors’ lives as they both teach in the Community Development major and equip churches and missionaries around the world. The professors’ engagement in developing training materials and in equipping practitioners has provided them with ample stories and experiences to make the learning process come alive, and it gives us students a picture of what it could look like for us to find our place in the different kinds of kingdom work around the world. Our professors bring years of experience in the field of relief and development, and this serves as an invaluable tool for students like me to connect theory with practice and abstract concepts with the lives of real people.

Learning is certainly always a process, and most would agree that the more hands-on experience and personal connection you can make with new material, the more likely it is to sink in and find its place in your future cognitive processes. In my case, a summer research internship in Rwanda combined with the involved tutelage of my “field tested” professors has brought me far along the path of connecting my faith in Christ to my passion for justice and reconciliation, as well as providing me with a glimpse of how this is happening throughout the world.

Will Kendall of Sumter, SC is completing his final year at Covenant College, majoring in both international Community Development and Economics. Will is currently pursuing opportunities to serve in the field of international development with a desire to focus on equipping churches to utilize the tool of savings-led microfinance to proclaim the gospel to their communities.

For more information about the Chalmers Center, visit us at www.chalmers.org.

12/01/08