Living Bricks Villages
The picture above is of the first two completed houses in the Living Bricks Village, taken July 2009!
Mbyo Village—the Model for Living Bricks Village
Bugesera District, East Province of Rwanda
The first goal of Living Bricks is to build a new village in the Bugesera district of Rwanda, near Mbyo, the original village of reconciliation featured in the documentary As We Forgive. The Rwandan government has already donated the land for this new community, and our goal is to raise $250,000 to build the first 50 houses. These houses will be built by volunteers who are recently released genocide prisoners, and will be inhabited by both survivors and ex-prisoners. The participants in this new community will be people who have expressed forgiveness and a desire to work toward reconciliation during counseling workshops offered by Prison Fellowship Rwanda.
The Living Bricks Village has broken ground! The first two houses have been built, the families have moved in and a third house is underway. We are on our way to our goal of building 50 houses total. The community has identified the families with the greatest need in the area and we are committed to building homes for each of the 48 families.
If you want to change the lives of a family in need, sponsor a house! This means you would provide the resources necessary for ex-genocide prisoners to build homes for these families in an act of practical reconciliation.
Future Goals
Our hope is to transform each Living Bricks village into a hub of economic growth and development through partnerships with key organizations, incorporating projects such as:
Micro-finance
Building health clinics and schools
Well digging
Agricultural projects, such as cattle and goat sharing
Developing economic opportunities is critical to ensuring that NEVER AGAIN will genocide occur in Rwanda.
If you are an organization that would like to join the efforts of Living Bricks, please contact us here.
This picture was taken April 2009 as construction began on the first two houses!
