Building a Future for Rwandan Women, Brick by Brick
Building a Future for Rwandan Women, Brick by Brick
Benita Hussain
Writer/Editor
March 21, 2012 • 3:00 am PDT
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Women's Opportunity Center
The Women's Opportunity Center in Kayonza, Rwanda, will not be a place for victims, but for survivors. When the facility opens in 2013, it will train women who lived through Rwanda's 1994 genocide to help rebuild their country, literally brick by brick. The project is the result of a collaboration between Washington, D.C.-based NGO Women for Women International, which aids women who have lived through wars around the world, and New York architecture firm Sharon Davis Design. Since 2008, the two groups have focused on building a community center to help educate and prepare Rwandan women for economic independence.
It's a much-needed effort in Rwanda, where the effects of the organized massacres and sexual assaults against the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus were especially devastating for women and girls. The resulting emotional trauma, unintended pregnancies, and HIV infections led to massive economic losses and financial instability, especially for those who lost their husbands and children to imprisonment, death, or militia recruitment.
Since the conflict ended, Rwanda's democratic leadership, now led by President Paul Kagame, has mandated 30 percent female representation in government and has been outspoken about the need to empower women as part of the country's reconciliation efforts. That mission inspired the creation of the Women's Opportunity Center, conceived as a sustainable space for vocational and agricultural training that will be built by local women as part of the educational process. The design won 2nd place among planned projects and 1st place in the education subcategory in last November's World Architecture Festival.
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