New film and report highlight success of Challenges’ flagship Rwandan Coffee Project

28/02/2020 Case Studies, Coffee Market Building, Implementation, Learning & Development, Rwanda Comments Off on New film and report highlight success of Challenges’ flagship Rwandan Coffee Project

Watch Challenges’ new film about the Rwandan Coffee Project!

 

Challenges’ flagship Rwandan Coffee Project has reached its mid-way point. To mark this major milestone, Challenges has released the above film and published a report detailing the activity that has gone on during the past two and a half months.

Featuring voices from Rwanda and Scotland, it reveals the journey coffee takes from the farms of Sholi to the cafes of Glasgow.

In the report, we detail much of the activity that has gone on across the eight coffee co-ops we’re working with, and how we have met a range of project milestones and targets. You can read and download the report, here.

Major achievements of the Rwandan Coffee Project

Challenges Rwandan Coffee Project

  • Growing volumes of coffee beans exported by 18%,
  • Improve each co-op’s “cupping” score (measure of coffee bean quality) to 85 or higher (out of 100), and thereby achieving the “speciality coffee” accolade
  • Train of more than 800 coffee workers, smallholders, young people and women in areas such as management and leadership; quality control; business finance and operations; marketing; solar power and other clean technologies; and gender-based violence reduction. Of those taking part in training activities, 47.5% were women
  • Increase international market access, including sales visits and/or representation in Scotland and global trade fairs. This includes introductions to more than 15 new commercial buyers
  • Increase operational efficiency for most of the co-ops
  • Support the organisation of youth networks involving 850 young people and enabling increased access to business and work training, as well as support groups for women and girls to better access reproductive rights and healthcare
  • Provide accountancy software training and provide access to accounting software
  • Challenges Rwandan Coffee Project Provide functioning websites with new content, including newly commissioned photography
  • Drive clean tech innovations such as minigrid, water digesters and waste-water treatment facilities.
  • Catalyse nine start-up enterprises following business support, enterprise training and/or access to micro-finance.

Download the full report. 

 

 

 

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Challenges Rwanda partners with RICH to deliver gender-based violence training

25/11/2019 Advisory, Learning & Development, Rwanda Comments Off on Challenges Rwanda partners with RICH to deliver gender-based violence training
Rwanda Coffee Project

Challenges Rwanda has partnered with the Rwanda Interfaith Council on Health (RICH) to train community leaders and key figures within our project to support eight coffee co-operatives.

Over the past few weeks, Challenges has been supporting the development of the training, including translating much of the content into Kinyarwanda. The training will be delivered during the next week, coinciding with 16 Days of Activism, a global campaign to try to reduce violence and discrimination against women. Two weeks of follow-up training will take place in December next month, with another week in January.

Part of the work Challenges Rwanda undertakes with the coffee cooperatives is to engage the surrounding community to collectively develop solutions to the social issues they face.

It is with this focus that Challenges Rwanda partnered with RICH, an organization that has become renowned for expertise in the fight against gender based violence.

The aim of this training is to enable community leaders to become “agents of change”. Delivering this style of training means these individuals will return to their communities to teach and apply what they learned, therefore expanding the desired impact of the GBV programme.

Participants will learn about existing sex and GBV laws, and how to use that information to care for and support victims of male violence, including the procedure for reporting and other actions.

Matching the global trend, there has been an increase in violence against women in Rwanda. The Rwandan national public prosecution authority registered 505 rape cases in 2017/2018, compared to 308 cases registered the previous year. This is in addition to 1091 cases of domestic violence registered in 2017/2018, compared to 736 cases in 2016/2017.

This training is also complemented by a drive to widen access to reliable reproductive health information, especially for teenage girls and young women following a spike in teenage pregnancies, according to the Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey.

As we prepare to roll out the training, Challenges Rwanda has also developed a plan to monitor and evaluate the larger impact of the training. We hope to see an increase in the number of people who are using the protocols set out to support GBV victims and to drive initiatives, led by the agents of change in the community, to raise awareness of, and combat, violence against women.

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Coffee market building for peace and prosperity in Rwanda

26/06/2019 Coffee Market Building, Implementation, Learning & Development, Rwanda Comments Off on Coffee market building for peace and prosperity in Rwanda
Challenges Rwanda Coffee Market Building for Peace and Prosperity

Challenges Rwanda is a member of The Challenges Group, a family of social businesses committed to building prosperity. Challenges Rwanda launched in 2017 and offers a range of business growth services including business diagnostics, market assessments, pilot and prototypes, deal strengthening, investment readiness, and more. Our team of experienced associates also deliver accredited training programmes in business, management and leadership from the Chartered Management Institute, and we are uniquely placed to deliver tailored programmes adapted to rural and isolated environments and/or remote audiences, ensuring we provide trainees with the best opportunity to grow personally and professionally.

One of our key projects in Rwanda is the Coffee Market Building for Peace and Prosperity, which is funded by the Scottish Government. The coffee sector has been one of Rwanda’s success stories, playing a pivotal part in restoring the economy after the genocide 25 years ago, and rebuilding trust between community members. Helping the Rwanda coffee sector to better access the international market is one of the key aims of our Rwanda coffee project.

Launched in partnership with Twin Trading and the Scottish Fair Trade Forum in 2017, the Coffee Market Building for Peace and Prosperity project is working with eight coffee co-operatives in the country’s western and southern regions. The project, which is also supported by Enactus and Matthew Algie Coffee, aims to increase the capacity of eight Rwandan coffee co-operatives by delivering business, management and leadership training; improving quality control and each co-op’s “cupping scores”; streamlining and better enabling infrastructural processes; widening access to international markets; encouraging the adoption of clean tech innovations; and working with communities, particularly women and young people, to overcome systemic barriers to economic growth.

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Challenges shares Equal Community Foundation’s vision of a world free from gender-based violence

13/05/2019 Access Africa Programme, Advisory, Rwanda Comments Off on Challenges shares Equal Community Foundation’s vision of a world free from gender-based violence
Equal Community Foundation Challenges Group Rwanda Access Africa Programme

Joining our Access Africa Programme is the Equal Community Foundation, whose vision is a world free from gender-based violence. ECF works towards this vision through its mission: to raise every boy in India to be gender equitable, an outcome it calls Gender Equitable Boys. Challenges is working with the ECF team to bring their experience and expertise to Rwanda.

Until recently, Equal Community Foundation had focused on designing and implementing programmes that transform knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours for adolescent boys in India, while rolling out that approach through a national collaboration called Project Raise.

ECF has now begun to explore how it can accelerate the impact of organisations working with boys on gender equality in other countries by sharing its knowledge. In order to achieve this, Equal Community Foundation has developed a framework that describes the capacity required to raise Gender Equitable Boys at a national level. Equal Community Foundation now wants to use this framework to help organisations in other countries to build local capacity.

The Challenges Group is helping ECF to develop and test the diagnostic tool that assesses the capacity of a country against the ECF framework. Will Muir, chief executive at Equal Community Foundation, said he wanted to focus on Rwanda because of its progressive policy on gender equality.

Working closely with ECF, the Challenges team have now developed a robust interview toolkit based on the ECF framework, which our team in Kigali has used to engage with sector experts in Rwanda.

Will added: “Although we’re specifically working to assess the current landscape in Rwanda, the plan is for ECF to hone its diagnostic so that it’s robust and flexible enough to be applied in any country, meaning the charity can both accelerate and grow its impact internationally.”

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Clean Water Wave offers breakthrough solution for water filtration

30/04/2019 Access Africa Programme, Advisory, Implementation, Rwanda Comments Off on Clean Water Wave offers breakthrough solution for water filtration
Clean Water Wave Rwanda Challenges Group

In Rwanda, the Challenges team in Kigali are collaborating with a Scottish social enterprise called Clean Water Wave. Clean Water Wave has developed a water-filtration system that is high volume, and low power and low maintenance.

Clean Water Wave

Clean Water Wave’s CAFE system can turn dirty water into safe drinking water.

Within our Access Africa Programme, Challenges is working with Clean Water Wave to identify the most feasible partner in Rwanda for a pilot that will demonstrate the potential of CWW’s CAFÉ water filter system. This innovative and sustainable treatment solution can be used in rural and hard-to-reach communities. It’s a breakthrough system that can treat polluted ground and surface water, and turn it into clean drinking water. All of us at Challenges and Clean Water Wave are deeply excited about the potential for CAFE.

Working with Clean Water Wave, Team Rwanda is in advanced talks with the national water regulator, the Rwanda Water and Sanitation Corporation.

Clean Water Wave is a social enterprise committed to providing technology that can provides clean water to everyone around the globe. Like the team at Challenges, CWW believes in working collaboratively with local partners, NGOs and other social enterprises in order to fulfil its clean water aims and help generate jobs.

Have a look at Clean Water Wave’s website for more information on their water treatment system.

 

The Access Africa Programme

The Access Africa Programme enables Scottish social enterprises and social entrepreneurs to explore and expand into African markets. It provides market research and business development support, funded by the Scottish Government, to enterprises and individuals who have an idea, product, service or model that could make a real impact in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

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