Local ladies offer helping hand

Laureen F. Guenther
Times Contributor

 

Carrie Sproule and Amy Wegner of Strathmore will travel to Rwanda in October, to support mothers affected by extreme poverty.
Sproule first went to Rwanda with the organization HOPEthiopia/Rwanda in 2013, reaching out to 10 Rwandan women who’d survived sexual assault during the 1994 genocide, when they were 9 to 14 years old.
“They all had children from that raping and their schooling was cut short,” Sproule said. “Their families were killed. So all they could do was sell themselves to feed their children.”
Sproule and seven others visited the Rwandan women in their homes, showing love, building trust and, through a translator, listening to their stories.
“The stories these precious, beautiful young girls told us, they broke our hearts,” Sproule said. “They couldn’t believe that all these women from Canada would come and sit in their little homes, because they were despised by their own people.”
They helped the Rwandan women create personal scrapbooks, recording their stories, taking and inserting photographs, and adding songs, prayers, Bible verses and other inspiring messages.
“When we went back the next year, some of those scrapbooks were worn out,” Sproule said. “They (finally) had something of their life to show. They’d shown it with such pride.”
Between those yearly visits, HOPEthiopia had enrolled the women’s children in school and trained the women in the business of sewing. Scholarships, donated by Albertans, covered the women’s living costs during their training.
Similar teams now go to Rwanda annually, re-connecting with the women who started training the year before, and meeting 10 new women.
Almost 100 Rwandan women have been through training since 2013, Sproule said, and the trained, experienced women now run business co-ops and mentor the newer women.
“It was like they lived in a tunnel with no light at the end,” she said, about how training has changed women’s lives. “Once you’re in that kind of a lifestyle, how do you get out of it? It’s just like suddenly life and light has been put into their life and they have a way out.”
The trained women still need support, however, and it’s those women whom Sproule and Wegner will visit on this trip, giving care, encouragement and accountability.
“The encouragement to the women, that somebody from over here would care enough to come to just be with them, to encourage them, is worth (so much),” Sproule said.
Since she was a little girl, Sproule said, she’d said she was going to be a missionary to Africa. So when her friend, HopEthiopia/Rwanda co-founder Glenda Dubienski, invited her to be on the first Rwanda team, she immediately said yes.
“Finally in 2013, I got to go the heart of Africa,” she said. “I feel that I’m called to do it. To be able to do it, even in my ’70s is, for me, my passion.
“I challenge anyone, no matter what their age, that it changes your life,” she added. “We have so much, if we can just give a little.”
Sproule and Wegner are hosting a fundraising dinner called Flavours of Hope, featuring an international meal, Sept. 25 at 5 p.m., at Hope Covenant Church. Funds raised will help pay travel costs, and any extra will go to scholarships for women in training. Contact Sproule at ccenns@gmail.com or 403-615-6054 to sponsor the meal, reserve a free ticket or sponsor a Rwandan child or mother.
Learn more about HOPEthiopia/Rwanda on their Facebook page.