News from the Field

Volunteer Chie Shimizu and Rwandan villagers make soap for a micro-finance project

In a small open courtyard a group of eight men, women and youngsters sit smiling and chatting amiably, carefully pouring caustic soda into a pot of heated oil, then flavoring it with avocado and stirring it in a silky smooth substance.

Amidst the laughter, the surrounding view is bucolic, a modest home of mud walls surrounded by small vegetable gardens tapering away into richly green rolling hillsides which surround the nearby city of Kigali, capital of the central African nation of Rwanda.

Under the watchful eye of an ‘honorary citizen’ of their village of Rubona Umudugudu, 27-year-old Chie Shimizu from the Japanese city of Fujisawa in Kanagawa Prefecture, the locals are making soap.

It is a modest enterprise—the villagers meet every two weeks to make the soap which they can sell for 70 Rwandan francs (575 francs is the equivalent of 1 US dollar) in nearby surrounding villages. But the micro-finance project is already turning a profit and, according to Chie Shimizu, is giving the participants both a sense of pride and helping them to improve the quality of their daily village life.

Rwanda has made a remarkable recovery from the genocide which ripped the country apart in the 1990s, claiming as many as 800,000 lives.

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has been active for several years in helping Rwanda’s rehabilitation, sponsoring and financing mainstream development projects in such areas as education and IT, but the organization also sent some 24 members of its Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteer (JOCV) system to participate in mainly grass-roots programs at the village level.

Chie Shimizu, who studied politics and economics at Aoyama Gakuin University, arrived in Rwanda in 2008 for two years and is the only ‘foreigner’ in Rubona Umudugudu village.

Volunteer Chie Shimizu and Rwandan villagers make soap for a micro-finance project

She believed a micro-finance project for soap would be one way to help groups of villagers, many of whom remain dirt poor. Similar small scale schemes have assisted millions of poor people around the world. In one particularly successful project, communities in parts of West Africa have harnessed the treasures of the local shea tree to make soap and other toiletry articles which have subsequently become world famous.

When she began the project, Chie Shimizu made it clear it would be a commercial enterprise and not simply charity. Each member had to provide 500 Rwandan francs of their own and although Chie advanced 2,000 francs, the loan was repaid within two months.

There were some hiccups at the beginning. “We tried making soap with a recipe from Japan,” she remembers. “Of course, it did not work well. The types and quality of ingredients such as oil that we find here are different from those in Japan. A foreign recipe and local ingredients simply did not mix well. So we started all over again with a local recipe and local ingredients.”

“Chie’s idea of providing a way forward for a better life, and not simply making money gave us dignity as equal humans and partners,” said one participant, school teacher and mother of five children, Uwera SaUda. “We do not need sympathy. We need work to improve our lives.”

Though they are already turning a profit, the cooperative the village group has even larger targets, nurturing local ingredients and expanding production until they can even crack the market in the nearby capital, Kigali.