Who we are
The Rebuild Women's Hope Foundation works with women in South Kivu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the island of Idjwi and along the shores of Lake Kivu.
It grew out of the Rebuild Women's Hope Cooperative, which Marcelline Budza founded in 2013 so that women coffee farmers could sell their own coffee and keep the income. From the start the Cooperative put part of what it earned into the things its members said they needed most, and over ten years that became a maternity and pediatric health center on Idjwi, a women's center for training and legal advice, water pumps for the villages around the washing stations, and hundreds of women learning to read and to run a small business.
That work is now the Foundation's. Created in 2024, it receives the grants and donations a coffee business cannot, and runs three programs for the same communities: economic development, health care, and women's rights. The Cooperative continues to grow, process and sell the coffee.
What we have built
Everything here was asked for by the women of Idjwi and Kalehe before it was built.
A health center on Idjwi
A maternity and pediatric center, opened in December 2020, that has delivered thousands of babies and seen thousands of patients since. It was built through the pandemic.
A women's center
Built in 2020 with the prize money from the French Republic's Human Rights Prize, awarded to RWH in 2019. It teaches tailoring, baking, soap-making and business skills, and offers legal advice, so that women have an income outside the coffee season.
Clean water
Pumps near the washing stations and the surrounding villages, running since 2017 and paid for from coffee sales.
Literacy and business training
Hundreds of women in the territories of Kalehe and Idjwi have learned to read and to keep accounts, with the French Embassy in the DRC, each one followed by an RWH agent as she starts an activity of her own.
Savings groups
Village savings and loan associations that let members borrow to start and grow small businesses.
Our vision
To rebuild the hope of our nation by supporting the efforts of Congolese women to create equity, justice and solidarity for themselves, their families and their communities.
We do this by starting from what women in these villages say they need, and building it with them. The Foundation is led from Bukavu by a Congolese woman who grew up there, and its programs are run by people from the communities they serve. Our board sits in Europe and the United States and raises the funds; the decisions about what to build are made on the ground.
Our founder:
the story of Marcelline
Marcelline Budza, Executive Director
Marcelline grew up in Bukavu on the south shore of Lake Kivu during one of the most violent periods in the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The youngest of four daughters, her father abandoned the family when she was three. Inspired by her mother’s bravery in raising her and her sisters and sending them to school using the money she earned from selling coffee and pineapples, Marcelline was motivated from a young age to do something to change the situation for women and girls in eastern DRC. After studying agronomy at the Evangelical University in Africa, Marcelline founded Rebuild Women’s Hope in 2013. Today, Marcelline is the president of the cooperative, and the Executive Director of the Foundation.
