The latest news on BikeTown Rwanda is that each foreign participant will be paired with a mother and child team and will help to sponsor both the mother and child’s transportation, food & lodging.
Together, BikeTown Africa and Foundation Rwanda have the the opportunity to build bikes alongside a Foundation Rwanda mother-and-child team. The Foundation Rwanda mother/child team will take the bike home with them, which will enable the child to travel to school and the mother to pick up life-saving medications from the village clinic.
For those not familiar with Foundation Rwanda’s work or mission:
In February of 2006, photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik traveled to East Africa to report on a story for Newsweek Magazine about the 25th year anniversary of the inception of HIV/AIDS. While in Rwanda, Jonathan heard the testimony of Odette, a genocide survivor who was raped and impregnated during the war, resulting in her contracting HIV/AIDS and giving birth to her child. Later that year, Jonathan returned to Rwanda and discovered that there are an estimated 20,000 children who were born as a result of sexual crimes during the genocide and these children need help.
Children born of rape during the Rwandan genocide are not able to access the support to which survivors are entitled, as they were technically born after the genocide. Further, these children and their mothers are often shunned by their villages and families due to the stigma of rape and “having a child of a militia.” These traumatized mothers are unable to pay for their children’s educational needs, specifically the annual $350 to attend secondary school, and the cycle of poverty continues. Foundation Rwanda was created to sponsor education for these children, and to provide trauma counseling and income generating activities for their mothers.
All of these children are turning 16 years old and do not know the circumstances surrounding their birth. The BikeTown Africa/Foundation Rwanda bike build is a very special opportunity for these families to take part in a positive activity together. Each foreign participant will be paired with a mother and child team and will help sponsor both the mother and child’s transportation, food & lodging. We hope you’ll understand that the cost for this trip is $1075 which is slightly higher than our other trips for this reason.
