tubehotwese's story — Grace Stanley

The other day my boss in Santa Barbara realized that something different is happening at our Tubehotwese co-op. In the past year Tubehotwese has gained 75 new members, where normally a co-op would gain around 5 new members a year. My boss asked me to investigate this growth by making a chronology of Tubehotwese's creation and evolution. Also looking into what about them might set them apart. In an effort to figure out what makes Tubeho so exceptional I interviewed my boss in Rwanda. He reasoned that yes they are different in some regards but their development also follows the same path as most of our co-ops. I am uploading the chronology and story of Tubeho I wrote because I think it is a good window into what exactly it takes to create a community/cooperative,

"The co-op:

Tubehotwese is an exceptional member of WD4H’s family of cooperatives. It is located in a remote area in the northern corner of Rwanda on the Ugandan border, in an area that has no previous history of cooperatives. The concept of this cooperative was first dreamt up by a Pastor Naome. Her family was from this area but she did not grow up there, she returned to her families area to build a church. In 2004 she established this church. The members of her church were extremely poor and could not contribute to the church’s survival and growth.

Because of this Naome sought the assistance of Justin. She had heard about Justin from another community working with him far away. She desperately wanted to build her church and it’s people up, but she needed support. These church members were in desperate conditions. She knew that by raising the living standards of her church members that her church would inherently benefit.

Justin reasoned with her that she was a pastor that worked on spiritual development and he focuses on economic development. Perhaps they could harmonize these spiritual and economic assets to develop this community.

Justin worked with Naome to teach her the economic development aspects they needed to focus on. They couldn’t start this concept of growth until the people in Naome’s church were working. If they weren't working he could not ensure their sustainable development. Naome was concerned that the people were unwilling to work. She hadn’t grown up in this area so was not sure if these peoples lack of development was due to their laziness? Their family background? Or their history?

Justin and Naome realized they first needed to know these people’s background. They ran different trainings with the community members to try and understand who they were.

First, they interviewed the initial members to understand their history. Naome and Justin first realization was that these people didn’t even understand themselves. The more trainings the members attended the more they came to understand who they were and what they were capable of. After understanding these peoples background Justin and Naome moved onto trainings that helped the members understand themselves, their skills, and what they were willing/able to do.

Through these trainings they found that the people they were working with were very individualistic. That would make this work difficult and unsuccessful. If they continued to think individually, their cycle would stay the same. They had to figure out a way to bring their opposing thoughts, talents, and differences together. All of them were different, if they brought those differences together successfully, they could be more productive.

Justin, realizing that these people were struggling to identify themselves and their skills, worked with them individually. He helped members identify their skills so they could understand themselves. By doing this they would be inspired and motivated to pull themselves and their new community out of poverty. He had to understand these individuals and what they brought to the table before he could understand what potential the group held.

These trainings brought the people of Tubehotwese from being isolated and desolate to a functioning and hopeful community. To summarize the three steps:

First, WD4H had to understand the communities background so they could understand what these people were capable of and willing to do. Second, they helped the community members to understand who they were and what they were able to do. Third, once they understood what they could do as individuals they had to figure out what they could do together.

They started this last step in small groups. These small groups discussed, decided, and presented what they thought they could do together to better themselves. Then, the larger group voted on the best three propositions and a second vote cut these three propositions into the last best option.

This is how the idea of working together was introduced, they didn’t come up with these concepts as individuals, it came from the group.

Next was introducing the concept of a cooperative. Justin and Naome asked the community members if they preferred to work as individuals or as a group. As a reminder, all of these trainings and steps take a very long time, introducing these lessons in an effective way is a very slow process.

They decided they wanted to work as a group. Now they needed to own their own change. They had to identify the challenges and benefits of working together. How could they reduce or harmonize those challenges of working together? To alleviate these challenges it is best to legalize everything by making it a government sanctioned cooperative. They were able to equalize work and benefits by establishing regulations. These rules give them responsibility.

The first steps in their cooperative’s journey was to build on what they already had themselves, working together with their individual possessions. For example, if you have land and I have land how can we make them more productive together? That was the case in this cooperative, different members combined their smaller pieces of land to make it one, bigger, more successful plot of land. After they joined together, they worked on registering themselves as a cooperative with WD4H and the government. At that point and for some time, they were working together without any support or donations.

Receiving their goats and cows was the next step, this is what gave them the hope and confidence they needed to see and work past their current situation. In the beginning they were still struggling, their hope was very low. Even though they were working towards a better future, they were still blind to this future. For them, having goats was like seeing the future. They were working on a small piece of land, but goats added value and production to this land. There were not only tangible impacts of the goats, the benefits were more intangible. Goats raised their hope and confidence while simultaneously opening their eyes to the future. These positive effects of the goats also caused people to work harder and more effectively toward the brighter future they saw.

Tubehotwese’s isolation and rural location explains why it is different from other cooperatives. When you are working with a group like this, in an area like this, they see themselves in an inescapable circle. They are not capable of viewing themselves outside of that circle. When you see people coming from outside that circle, in this case World Dance for Humanity, you see an open door to the world. When they meet with people from World Dance from Humanity, they understand that there is something bigger and brighter outside of them, that they have access to. Just this knowledge benefits them, it is not only about the donations or even mostly about the donations, it is more knowing that somebody in the big wide world cares about them. They no longer see themselves as isolated, but connected to the world. The ambassador to their connection to the world is World Dance for Humanity. They are bridging this connection between this community and the world.

That is one reason why Tubehotwese has become so successful with rapid growth in membership. Another is, people in the area are seeing the benefits that their friends, families, and neighbors are reaping through the cooperative. These are not just material and financial benefits, these are emotional benefits. Among these emotional benefits are, being able to rely on the members of the community to care about you, help you, and being worthy to gain your trust. Tubehotwese is having exponential growth not only because people are seeing the fruits of the members labor but because of their location in general. Because they are in an extremely isolated area, their few job/business opportunities. There are also few opportunities to feel apart of the community in their region and country, but also the community of the world. We are social beings, people have an innate desire to be apart of a community, connected to each other, and able to trust each other. Tubehotwese is living proof of this.

The school:

When you are working with a community, you need to understand their lives as much as possible. WD4H recognized that this community had a critical need of education. They did not have schools in their area. Students had to travel very far in order to get to school. This caused a lot of school drop outs in the area.

Then, the government introduced a new program that every student had to go to nursery school before primary. The government created this mandate and then forced parents to pay for this education from their own pockets. While in remote areas like where Tubehotwese is located, there were no schools available. Two main concepts were not looked at when creating this mandate, affordability and accessibility of schools.

Tubehotwese’s school was initially created to be a business. WD4H wanted the people of this community to be able to gain a profit off of the school so they could pay for additions to the school, up keep, and supplies. Down the road WD4H and the community realized that this was not possible. The children’s parents could not contribute enough in school fees for the school to become “for profit”. The tuition, if placed at a higher rate, was causing students to drop out. But if the tuition was placed at a lower rate the school could barely sustain itself.

Their were multiple steps in creating this school that lead to its current state of affairs. The first was mobilizing people and teaching them the need they had, how important it was to have available education in the area. They educated the community members on how it would be built, how it would be sustained, and what kind of school it would be in general. Then all of the community members pooled their funds to build the school building. Unfortunately their funds were not enough to finish the school building and over time it began to deteriorate. Then, in 2015, with the help of WD4H donations, they could revisit the project. With these funds, they renovated the building, bought furniture for the classrooms, and supplies for students.

At the beginning planning phases of this school the co-op members simply generalized that it would be a “for profit” entity. At that point they could not specify how much tuition would be. They were not sure on how many students would attend and how much their parents would be willing to spend.

This made planning difficult, and a few months after they started their school they realized they needed to re-evaluate their plans to sustain the school. The school fee plan they began with was charging each student 5,000 francs (approx. $5.50) per term (3 months). At the end of that first term students started dropping out. The second term they decided to drop the tuition down to 3,000 francs. With 3,000 francs a term, they could not have a profitable school. They are currently still stuck at that amount for tuition and sustainability of the school is difficult. They can’t pay teachers, make repairs, feed the children during the day, or buy school supplies. Currently, four of the teachers are receiving a small salary, and 3 are volunteers.

Although the school is struggling, they still have the essentials, a strong school building and strong spirits. They have many students that are attending school regularly and who’s parents feel strongly about their children’s education. The presence of this school in their community has worked to help these parents realize the importance of education. The school also has great teachers that are well trained and extremely passionate about their students. Speaking with the teachers and leaders of this school you can tell that they are still confident about the success of the school and are there working for little or no salary because they truly care. Watching these teachers dance and sing with their students you can tell that essentials needed for this schools success are there, a compassionate staff that is working tirelessly towards their students success."