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By Dick Bushnell
PICO National Network is best known for its grass-roots organizing efforts in the United States. Recently though, PICO’s mission has taken on an international dimension by providing training for community organizers from Central America and Africa.
In 2005, for example, Pastor John Rutsindintwarne, secretary general of the Lutheran Church in Rwanda, spent six months in Oakland, Calif., training with PICO. His parents had fled the 1962 Rwandan massacre and resettled in Tanzania where John was born. He saw the second wave of refugees who fled across the border to Tanzania during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In 1995, John accompanied four families as they returned to their home village in Rukira, Rwanda. When other families heard that Rwanda was peaceful, they returned home as well.
Earlier this year, after Pastor John completed training in Oakland, he flew back to Rwanda. There, in a rural village called Mumeya, he began the process of grass-roots organizing. There is no hospital or clinic within 30 kilometers of Mumeya, so residents including women facing difficult births have to walk or be carried by stretcher for miles to receive medical care. Mumeya’s residents decided that what they needed most of all was a community clinic.
Recently, Father John Baumann, S.J., executive director of PICO, and Ron Snyder, executive director of Oakland Community Organizations (a PICO affiliate), traveled to Rwanda. “The highlight of the trip was to see the work of Pastor John,” reports Snyder. “We traveled over dirt roads to a remote rural area. We arrived on the top of a hill and saw people planting trees, breaking stones, and building a latrine. All of them were donating two hours a week to construct a clinic for Mumeya.”
Snyder describes the scene (pictured above): “Around 300 people, including mothers with babies on their backs and young men carrying hoes, all gathered together under a tree and sat on the ground. About 20 elected leaders, nearly half of them women, sat on benches facing the community. After an opening prayer, we witnessed an incredibly organized meeting in which the leaders reported on their meetings with community members and the commitments people had made to dedicate specific amounts of time to make bricks to build the clinic.”
“I was humbled and inspired by this experience which was reminiscent of biblical gatherings on the mount with people eager to build the kingdom,” adds Snyder.
Snyder found the transformation of Rwanda remarkable. “What makes this all the more incredible is that this country went through a genocide 12 years ago in which one million people were slaughtered in a period of three months. It is amazing to see the Rwandan people working so hard to overcome trauma, hatred, and desire for revenge into real attempts at peace and reconciliation. Pastor John’s organizing is one tool that brings people together, giving them space to decide for themselves what is important and to work together to rebuild their community, their country, and their society.”
Funding for the clinic comes from some private donors, foundations, and the California Province of the Society of Jesus. Eventually, a local organization--Congregations Re-building Community in Rwanda--will raise a budget to support the work of Pastor John and other organizers.
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