CARD AID
Cards from Africa - RWANDA

The scars of the Rwandan genocide that claimed some 800,000 victims will take a long time to heal. Communities throughout the country are struggling to deal with the legacy of unthinkable brutality. Families headed by orphaned teenagers, with sibling dependents, are commonplace. It was from a desire to help these survivors build a better life that British expatriate Chris Page and Rwandan artist Gabriel Dusabe began Cards from Africa, a company that markets greetings cards made by a poor Rwandan community to shops around the world.

The company began in 2004. Operating on a fair-trade basis, it now provides a steady income for 40 young Rwandans. It runs a variety of practical programmes to help the community make best use of their land. It also employs a part-time counsellor to help the young survivors of the genocide. The cards are made from recycled paper gathered from the offices and printing presses of Rwanda's capital Kigali. Cards from Africa has set itself the initial target of selling more than 500,000 cards annually across the globe, thus providing employment for over 300 orphaned young people in Rwanda.

What are they doing now

In 2006 World Challenge went to Rwanda in East Africa to visit the Cards from Africa project. The company markets greetings cards made by over 40 young Rwandans, providing them with a steady income and helping to heal some of the scars of the 1994 genocide through counselling programmes. When our team left Cards from Africa they had ambitious plans to expand their sales and turn enough extra profit to bring more local people under their wing.

These objectives have largely been realised. Though project founder Chris Page admits that the business hasn’t grown as fast as he’d hoped, revenue has still doubled since 2005. And Cards from Africa hopes to continue with that level of growth in the years to come.

According to Chris, the World Challenge broadcast helped to raise the credibility of Cards from Africa as a reputable business: “always quite a challenge for small export businesses like ours in a developing country like Rwanda,” he says. With its unbiased perspective on the project, the World Challenge film has also proven useful as a marketing tool.

But the most important feature of the World Challenge experience was the role it played in boosting the confidence, self-esteem and morale of all the staff at Cards from Africa. “That made a big difference to how we worked viewed out future,” says Chris. “We remain truly grateful for the coverage the project received from the competition.”

For more info see http://cardsfromafrica.com