Ministry and Mission of Rwanda Partners Basket Co.

Empowering Rwanda’s Poor

The Rwanda Partners Basket Co. is a poverty fighting program of Rwanda Partners working to change the lives of impoverished weavers and their families in rural Rwanda. Rwanda Partners is a Seattle-based non-profit organization dedicated to fighting poverty and restoring hope amongst Rwanda's vulnerable poor. We do this in partnership with individuals like you who purchase our products and invest in our programs that provide jobs, education and reconciliation opportunities to Rwanda's widows, orphans, street children, former prostitutes, rural weavers, reconciled perpetrators and survivors, and rural farmers.

Changing Lives One Basket at a Time

The mission of the Rwanda Partners Basket Co. is to empower the impoverished women of Rwanda to rise above their subsistence-level existence by providing them with the training, tools, support and markets needed to sell their baskets in the west. Rwanda Partners accomplishes this in several ways:
• Providing “Master Weavers” to work with these impoverished women to help them improve and expand their weaving skills
• Paying the weavers directly a premium wage for each of their baskets that is 8 times what they could make for them in their local markets
• Supplying high quality sisal, ,dye and other materials needed to ensure a quality product
• Forming the weavers into Weaving Cooperatives that provides them with a leadership structure, financial accountability and access to savings accounts
• Providing for specific emergency needs for the weavers and their families
• Offering Healing and Reconciliation Workshops, trauma counseling, and life skills training to the weavers – many of whom are widows or wives of genocide perpetrators
• Opening up multiple markets in the west for the weavers’ baskets, thereby ensuring them a much higher volume of sales than they could ever hope to receive in Rwanda

Rwanda Partners Basket Co. is a Fair-Trade Certified company.

We provide our weavers with the highest possible profit for their baskets. Paying the weavers more for their baskets not only helps these women make their way out of poverty (which is what we are committed to doing at Rwanda Partners), but it also instills dignity, value and a sense of worth in them by showing them that their baskets are worth the price we pay, that their work is to be valued and that they are truly the heroes in their family’s fight against poverty. Join with us in showing Rwanda’s women that they are worth the price of a basket and that their work is to be highly valued!