Cari, Patrick, and Laura were up and out of Kigali early for a morning meeting with Amandin Musilikari and Narcisse Ndagijimana, District Cooperative Officer (DCO) and Vice-Mayor of Gasabo District, respectively. Rwanda Knits has been partnering with DCOs, the local government officials responsible for overseeing the implementation of Rwanda's cooperative policy on a District level, since May 2008. These partnerships have been instrumental in moving groups' training and registration processes along.
As Cari, Patrick, and Laura explained Rwanda Knits' current project to facilitate the formation of a cooperative union of knitters in Gasabo District, the Vice-Mayor invoked the prospect of an entirely new level of collaboration: working with the District government to build a local knitting center. This center, long a part of the project's long-term vision, could facilitate management, training, export, and warehousing activities for all knitting co-ops in Gasabo--and even the country--by providing a central "home" for the cooperative union.
The meeting concluded with an invitation to join the Joint Action Forum on Development--a body of local NGOs who parter with the District to achieve development goals--and an exciting sense of possibility.
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