From Rwanda, with love. MAXINE GORDON reports on the jewellery and crafts coming out of Africa thanks to a team of dedicated York volunteers

AMY TRUMPETER was sitting in a volunteer’s office in Kigali crying with happiness at news she had become an auntie when she first met Habiba.

Like many of the Rwandan women Amy, from York, met during her three-week visit to the African country, Habiba was struggling to rebuild her life after the genocide of the 1990s.

She had lost her entire family in the bloody killings. Or thought she had. Unable to speak English, Habiba asked an interpreter in the volunteer’s office why Amy was crying. When she was told it was because she had received good news from home that her sister’s baby had been born, Habiba nodded in understanding and said: “I felt the same way when I discovered my brother was still alive.”

Back in York, sitting in an office on The Mount, Amy shares this story to explain the link she formed with Habiba – a bond that not only turned Amy’s world around, but Habiba’s too, and scores of women just like her.

“Habiba’s story put things into perspective for me,” said Amy. “I was lucky to have all my family.”

Amy discovered that Habiba made unusual beaded necklaces out of pens, but had no market for them – local people couldn’t afford them and tourists had been scared away by the years of civil war. Amy thought she could sell them in England, so took Habiba to the market, spent £20 on beads, cotton and pens and brought the finished goods back to England to sell.

“That was the start of Kigali Crafts,” says Amy. “I didn’t intend to establish a business, but I kept getting messages asking if I could take bags, jewellery, and other items, and very quickly I had a roomful of stuff.”

Two years on from that meeting, Fair Trade goods made by women such as Habiba are being sold as far afield as the US, Norway and Belgium, as well as in the UK.

Items include beaded necklaces made out of colourful, woven paper; intricately coiled earrings made from sisal and purses and bags from pretty, printed fabrics. Also for sale are woven baskets.

For Valentine’s Day, the team of York-based volunteers who keep Kigali Crafts going, have added Swarovski crystal red-heart necklaces and earrings as well as hand-made soaps to the collection.

Amy estimates the social enterprise supports more than 100 impoverished families in Rwanda.

The business also sells goods made by female co-operatives outside the capital, in Gitarama, in central Rwanda, and Gisenyi, near the border with Congo. Many women are rape survivors and have HIV.

Money from the sale of their Fair Trade crafts helps to provide not only food and education, but medical cards which are a passport to essential anti-retroviral drugs to keep them alive.

A group of schoolgirls in Ruhengeri make pretty coin purses, working in the co-operative from 9am to 1pm every day, then using their wages to pay for schooling in the afternoon, when they learn English, maths and ICT.

One year after first meeting Habiba, Amy returned to Kigali and was heartened to see the impact of the venture on her life. “She had electricity in her house, had paid off her debts and was sending her daughter to school. She was not massively wealthy, but she was living above the poverty line which is two US dollars a day.”

Running the enterprise has had a huge impact on Amy’s life. No one takes a salary from Kigali Crafts, so Amy earns a living from teaching (she is a qualified philosophy and RE teacher) and runs a marketing business, Trumpeter Media.

Long term, Amy would like to employ an agent in Kigali to help build the business, find more women workers, check quality control and arrange for the goods to come to the UK.

At present, Amy relies on volunteers to bring back goods in their luggage – freight costs are prohibitive.

The next move is to grow the business, expanding the market into the US and Europe, introduce a catalogue and sell wholesale. At the moment, sales need to grow so Amy can employ someone for one day a week to run the business.

She said: “It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, but it has meant I have struggled for money and put pressure on my relationship. I go to sleep at night carrying a heavy burden on my shoulders. If we don’t make enough sales then women such as Habiba can’t feed their families. It’s a blessing and a burden.”

• Find out more at kigalicrafts.com and read Amy and the team’s blog at kigalicrafts.wordpress.com