THE RWANDA GROUP
TRUST
The Rwanda Group
began in the
1980s through Joe and Rosemary Bamber working in the Missions and Third World
Group in St. Gregory’s parish.
The ‘Rwanda Group
Trust’ was
established by deed in 1998.
The Objectives:
For assisting the poorest of the poor in the areas of Poverty, health, education and shelter.
Trustees:
Michael Donlan, Myra Gregory, Mark Ibison, Veronica Sanders, Bernadette
Roberts, and Clare Spicer and Judith Potts who joined us recently after the death of their father, Joe Bamber.
Our 4 Rwandan Groups
contacts are named below and they provide reports on use of funds.
Cyangugu….Father Placide Manirakiza
Gikongoro…Petronille Uwizeye
Nyundo……..Fr. Fabian
Kigali………..Beatrice Murekatete
So as to be completely accountable to all, we request reports
each quarter on the use of funds provided. We relay these along with any other
relevant news to all our supporters either through email, posted or hand
delivered newsletters.
Fundraising Our main income was our Charity shop which operated with volunteers.
Due to Covid and the fact that most of our volunteers were in the ‘vulnerable’
age group. we were forced to close the shop. We now rely on donations,
sponsored events and car boot sales.
RWANDA GROUP TRUST
(A charitable trust registered
in England and Wales under number 1074656)
REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES
For
The year ended 31st
December 2021
OBJECTIVES OF THE TRUST
The
trust was established by deed on December 9th 1998 to advance the
education and relieve the poverty and sickness of people in Rwanda. The Trust took on the work of its predecessor
organisation, The Rwanda Group, which had been working with the same objectives
since 1983.
RWANDA
Rwanda
is a small landlocked country in Central Africa. It has a predominantly rural population of
approximately 12.5 million people. It is
one of the most densely populated countries in Africa. 2021
saw the 27th anniversary of the 1994 genocide when an estimated one million
people lost their lives. Much progress
has been made in overcoming this disaster but there is still much more work
required to complete the task.
Rwanda
is a poor country with the bulk of its population living in considerable
need. World Bank figures show the
average life expectancy at birth as approx. 69 years with 24 out of every 1000
children dying before reaching their fifth birthday.
TRUSTEES
The
trustees are responsible for the assets, administration and work of the Trust.
Mr
Joseph Bamber together with his wife Rosemary, R.I.P., and fellow trustee Sister Mary McCarren FCJ, began the work in 1983 after a visit to
Rwanda and seeing the difficulties under which its people laboured.
Mr
Bamber has overseen the growth and remarkable achievements of the charity since
its registration in 1998. However in December 2021 he announced his decision to
retire as a trustee. He does continue to
take a keen interest in its work.
There
are currently 5 trustees who meet together at least once per quarter.
The
current chair of the trust is Mr Michael Donlan.
The
other trustees are Bernadette Roberts, Veronica Sanders, Mark Ibison and Myra
Gregory.
STRATEGIES TO ACHIEVE THE OBJECTIVES OF THE TRUST
The
donor strategy is to fill some of the many gaps in provision left by the major
aid charities with relatively small but effective gifts. The help given is designed to be in the
nature of help to friends by friends.
This is being accomplished by –
1) Building friendships with
communities, schools, individuals and families in need and providing help to
them in this spirit.
2) Establishing committees of
Rwandans in the provinces of Rwanda to advise on need, opportunities to help
and to assist in the distribution of grants.
The
trust works to achieve these objectives through the excellent cooperation of 4
committees – in Kigali, Cyangugu, Gikongoro and Nyundo.
The
funding strategy of the Trust is to make Rwanda, its people and their
difficulties known to wider audiences and to accept donations of cash and goods
for resale from those sympathetic to the objectives of the Trust.
The
administrative strategy is to keep the work of the Trust as simple as possible
and incur a minimum of expense in carrying it out.
FUNDRAISING
The
year 2021 has seen a consolidation of the changes to our fund raising methods
forced on us by the continuing difficulties with the Covid pandemic. The
emphasis has been on increasing donations to the charity. Appeals have been
launched in all the parishes of the Lancaster Catholic Diocese and the local
parishes of the Liverpool and Salford dioceses. We have continued with the
charity’s quarterly newsletter and are creating an ever expanding mailing list.
Car boot sales and market stalls have also made significant contributions as
well as a sponsored event.
Income
Cash donations for
2021 amounted to a total of £42,763 an increase of approx £27,805 on last
year. This resulted in an increased gift
aid refunds to £5,468. Sales of donated items of £588 resulted in a total
income of £48,820.
Expenditure
In 2021
the Trust made grants of £30,400 to the four committees in Rwanda for
distribution to the poorest in their communities as deemed appropriate by them
and in accordance with the trust's objectives. The Trust also made grants of £8,730
towards various projects in Rwanda. The addition of bank charges of £120
resulted
in a
total expenditure of £39,250. The net increase of the charity’s income over
last year was approximately £12,280.
COMMUNICATION & FUTURE PLANS
Our
foremost means of communication is now our quarterly newsletter. This has
proved to be a very effective way of informing donors how their donations are
being used to help the poorest of the poor. It also accounts largely for the wonderful
increase in donations.
It is
intended to continue to sell donated items through such as market stalls, car
boot sales and seasonal fairs.
Also
we have plans to develop our website to increase its versatility for
information giving and provide an alternative and easier ways to donate.
We
will continue to produce information leaflets and submit articles in local
magazines and newspapers as well as advertising in supermarkets and churches
throughout the Lancaster diocese.
Donations
can continue to be given through the methods explained on our website at:- Rwandagrouptrust.blogspot.com
We
are always looking for potential opportunities to promote our work in the wider
community.
The trustees
agreed, as last year, that our priority will continue to be our ongoing
commitments and only to take on new projects when funds are available.
Finally I would
like to thank all our volunteers, donors and supporters for their dedication
resulting in such a successful year for the charity.
KEEPING IN TOUCH
The
address of the Trust is: 17 Mayfield Road Ashton Preston,
PR2 1EX
Email:
rwandagrouptrust.org@gmail.com
Website:
rwandagrouptrust.blogspot.com
This
Report was approved by the Trustees & Signed on their behalf by the chair
Michael
Donlan.
20th
April 2022
Talk for Holocaust Memorial Day
The story of
how the Rwanda Group Trust came into being really begins in 1981 in the small
town of Kibeho in Rwanda. That was the
year that Our Lady first appeared to 3 teenage schoolgirls at Kibeho High
School (apparitions which were officially
approved by the Vatican in 2001). Our
Lady requested prayer, deeper faith and repentance; she also specifically
predicted – 12 years before it happened – the 1994 genocide in which she said a
“river of blood” would flow across
Rwanda if people didn’t stop harbouring hatred for each other. Sadly these warnings weren’t heeded and the
historic tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis erupted into the genocide of
1994 when an estimated one million people were killed in only 100 days. During that period, men, women and even
children were literally “torn from their
homes” and murdered. The appalling violence and suffering that occurred
during and immediately following the genocide was movingly recounted by a
survivor, Immaculee Ilibagiza, in her book “Left
to Tell”. In the book she recounts
how she and 7 other women hid silently in a cramped bathroom for 91 days whilst
machete wielding killers hunted for them.
Immaculee survived her ordeal and was able, through the power of prayer,
to forgive those who had murdered most of her family.
As a result
of the genocide approximately 95,000 Rwandan children were orphaned, many of
whom had psychological scars because of the extreme violence and murders they
witnessed. Before 1994, Rwanda had just
4 orphanages but after the genocide many, many more were immediately needed. Today, Rwanda actually has one of Africa’s
fastest growing economies, but 63% of the population still live in extreme
poverty and many people are still suffering from the effects of the genocide.
The story of
the Preston based Rwanda Group Trust
is interwoven with events in Rwanda before and after the genocide. Preston teacher, Joe Bamber, had set up a
third world support group at St Gregory’s parish in 1977 and had made links
with Rwanda through a religious sister who was working there. Visits were made to Rwanda in 1983 and again
in 1987 before the genocide, when Joe took several students from Newman College. A further visit in 1995 revealed the
devastation caused by the genocide, including wrecked schools and houses and the
95,000 children orphaned across the country.
This
prompted Joe to redouble his efforts to raise much needed funds through car
boot sales, raffles and other parish events.
Our charity shop was opened in the year 2000 under the auspices of the
newly constituted Rwanda Group Trust.
(Which I’ll now refer to as the RGT)
4 committees
have now been set up by the RGT throughout Rwanda comprised of local priests,
religious sisters and lay people who receive the monies sent by the RGT and
distribute according to need. The
overriding principle is to “help the
poorest of the poor in the fields of health, food, shelter and education”.
I’ll now
mention a few projects which we have funded to give a flavour of how the money
is used. The Kabuga Health Centre was funded by the RGT – this project
provides health care for a large area.
One of its most important activities is with the victims of AIDS. Mothers who come there who are HIV positive
are able to be treated with a drug which prevents their babies from contracting
AIDS in the womb. This is clearly a very
significant new development in stopping the spread of AIDS. In the
area of food, we have a very active Goats project running in Rwanda. A £30 donation funds one goat for a family –
these are very sought after as they fulfil a number of functions. They provide plentiful protein rich milk and
they are also used for breeding and at the end of their lives, they provide
meat and goat skins. Another recent
project has been funding £780 to provide a well and a piped water supply to a
whole village community. In our earlier days as a Trust, we were
providing funds to build or repair many houses for widows of the genocide. We also now provide funds for metal roofing
materials which are now becoming compulsory and more recently several thousand
pounds to repair damage caused by severe floods last year. Probably
the greatest proportion of our funds is used to provide education. School fees are compulsory in Rwanda and are
in the region of £120 per annum. Many
families cannot afford this even for one child.
Once in school they are often provided with a meal which in most cases
is their only food of the day. We also
fund projects which provide these meals.
A milestone was reached 6 years ago when the
total amount distributed by the RGT since its inception, passed £1 million
pounds. Cllr Veronica Afrin, the mayor
of Preston at the time, visited our charity shop round the corner from here on
Syke St, to commemorate the event. Our current total distributed is
18 Knitted Queen Elizabeths raised £360…Thankyou Catherine Osbaldeston for
knitting 14 of those!!!
Keep Fit for Rwanda in the first 3 months up to the end
of last year raised £395 + £102.50 Gift Aid. Thank-you to all at St. Anthony’s
who are supporting that….and keeping so fit at the same time!!! 
