International Development in Rwanda

In July last year, I joined around 100 volunteers from the Conservative Party – MPs, parliamentary candidates, councillors, party activists and members on a two-week long trip carrying out voluntary work in Rwanda in central Africa.

The project was led by the Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell MP, and this was the third year the party has visited the country with Project ‘Umubano’, one of the party’s International Development social action projects.

The project’s aim is to make a modest contribution to the country’s development through partnerships in education, healthcare, business and justice, while at the same time familiarising politicians with international development issues.

During my time in Rwanda, I was one of a group of volunteers working on the education project, teaching classes of local primary school teachers, helping them to practice and improve their English. I was based in a small rural village called Rwamagana in Rwanda’s Eastern Province, approximately one hour from the capital, Kigali. In total there were 12 of us based in Rwamagana, including Desmond Swayne MP, Parliamentary Private Secretary to David Cameron.

Spending time in Rwanda was, without a doubt, a life-changing experience. Clearly there is a limit to what you can achieve in such a short space of time, but I am positive that we did make at least a modest contribution. It was humbling experience, full of a range of emotions. I may have nominally been teaching, but in my class I think the one who learned the most was me!

Politics is about people. You read about Africa in books or in the newspapers and we hear about it on television, but being in Rwanda is all about experiencing the reality of life in a developing country and there is no substitute for getting on the ground and learning first hand about the challenges of international development and what people have to experience.

When we weren’t teaching, we were getting involved in other very important projects, working with local communities and supporting aid groups with a number of initiatives to improve the quality of lives for a number of Rwandan people.

During the first weekend, we joined a number of our colleagues in Kigali on another social action project, ‘Umuganda’, which takes place across Rwanda on the last Saturday morning of every month. The volunteers descended en masse to support a local community with the installation of a new drainage system.

Along with six other volunteers, I also visited an orphanage and an HIV centre to look at the work they are doing in conjunction with Christian Aid and attended a presentation made by a number of other charitable organisations to hear about the work they are doing on a number of other key issues affecting the country./p>

On the Sunday, around 30 of us paid a visit to Murambi, one of the country’s genocide memorials to pay our respects to the one million people that were slaughtered in the 1994 genocide. This was a moving and harrowing experience. Whilst we should never forget the attrocities that occurred and those that fell victim to this brutal act of terror, it is encouraging to see just how far the country has moved on since these very dark days.