My interests with the MBAs Without Borders program stem from a career aspiration to become a development practitioner and a genuine desire to empower people of low-income countries to make progress in their continuous struggle of poverty.

WE-ACTx is an international community-based initiative that was launched in fall 2003 by front line AIDS physicians, activists and researchers with extensive experience in caring and advocating for HIV-positive women. Its primary goal is to increase women’s and children’s access to HIV testing, care, treatment, support, education and training in resource-limited settings at the grassroots level. WE-ACTx is committed to helping survivors of genocidal rape and sexual violence.

Transfair USA, (TFUSA) is an organization that enables sustainable development and community empowerment by cultivating a more equitable trade environment that will benefit farmers, workers, consumers, industry and the earth.
Transfair certifies and promotes fair-trade for various commodities; in Rwanda they work with four coffee unions to build business capacity and certify them so that they [...]

Overall, it was a real eye opening experience. Regardless of the nature of a project (development or otherwise) when there is money to be made, power to be gained regardless at whose expense, and space for ego there stands a recipe for conflict.

On Thursday I went out to visit one of the potter associations but what makes this one unique is that it is run solely by widows. Apparently during the Genocide this Batwa village was decimated and practically every man was killed.