AEE and Partners Respond to COVID Lockdowns

Rwanda’s lock-downs and restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic caused hardship to poor and disadvantaged families, many of whom need to work daily to meet their basic needs. Rwanda’s government coordinated a relief campaign to get food and essential materials to these families. We used our extensive network of self-help and savings groups get appropriate and timely COVID-19 safety and prevention messages to their 200,000 members, their families and communities.

In collaboration with the Rwandan Government, AEE Rwanda provided face masks – surgical and reusable – and hand sanitizer to 38,580 persons. Additionally, some of the many tailors belonging to AEE Rwanda self-help and savings groups pivoted their work towards making cloth masks for their communities.

Throughout 2021, as the immediate on ongoing effects of lock-downs affected the poorest and most vulnerable, AEE continued to fund-raise for, and distribute food and hygiene packs to 67,000 people living in our project areas.

To add to an already difficult year, on 22 May 2021 the Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) erupted with lava flowing into Goma, directly adjoining Rwanda’s city of Gisenyi. AEE Rwanda provided disaster relief to nearly 4,600 DRC and Rwandan families badly affected by the eruption, supplying mobile toilets, bedding, and iron sheets for re-establishing their homes.