There's No Place Like Home
Providing affordable housing and a livelihood for genocide survivors in Rwanda
An estimated 21,000 genocide survivors are still without permanent shelter.
SURF is working in partnership with a consortium of local survivor’s organisations to meet the pressing housing needs of survivors. Over the past two years, with support mainly from Comic Relief, and other donors, SURF has built 370 new homes, providing shelter for almost 2,000 survivors.
Meeting the needs of orphans in an efficient and environmentally friendly way
SURF-built homes are now being used by the Government of Rwanda as a model of quality low cost housing. Homes are made from stabilised soil blocks, a viable alternative to more expensive building materials such as bricks and stones, or environmentally unfriendly materials such as trees. A three bedroom house costs £2,500. Each new home provides shelter for, on average, four people. The households are primarily headed by young, orphaned, survivors.
‘I moved from family to family looking for accommodation. I did not have any money to offer even for rent, as I was more or less a beggar. I worked as a helper in exchange for being housed. Before settling in this village I had lived with seven different families, but now I have this house. I have some peace of mind, privacy, satisfaction. Even if I died now, at least I have an address where people will find my body and can come to mourn my death.’
Vestine, Mpungwe site, Huye district, Southern Province
The local authority allocates land and sites for house-building, and then SURF provides additional facilities to ensure that there are adequate services for the new sites. SURF, in partnership with local survivor’s organisations, then works to help develop and build the livelihoods of the members of the new established community. This may involve constructing community educational centres and health clinics, as well as providing income-generating activities, for the survivors.
In addition, with funding from Good Gifts, SURF has been able to set up demonstration farms which provide employment opportunities and income for many of the communities.
Kamonyi Orphan Village
SURF recently built a village of 10 new homes for child heads of households, orphaned by the genocide, in Kamonyi.
Only when SURF helped set up a demonstration farm at the village, which involved all the households, did the households really begin to bond. A small farm was set up, which included 5 cows, 30 goats, 20 turkeys, 50 chickens and 10 sheep. The milk from the farm is sold, and a proportion of the revenue is saved as a contingency, to be used in case funds are needed for veterinary care. Each household in the village is given eggs for the family, and at Christmas, some of the animals successfully reared on the farm will be sold to pay for household food and expenses.
A rota has been set up to share the workload of managing the farm, and one of the orphans is paid to work full-time to help with the running of it. Each new animal that is born on the farm is given in turn to one of the households, so in addition to generating an income and security, each household is also building its own herd and stock.