Jenny Warner currently serves as board chair for African Road. She is also a pastor, a writer, a listener, and an intercultural trainer.
The broad branches of an expansive mango tree at our guest house in Kigali, Rwanda provided pleasant late afternoon shade. I sat sipping tea with Ugandan Changemaker David Clemy, as I listened to his thoughts about and experience with African Road over the five years we have worked together.
“There’s so much African Road can offer to the developing world. I want to be a part of an organization that stands for what I believe in: people are experts of their situation, respecting what they can do, walking alongside of them meaningfully. It needs to be release, not relief… African Road has so many lessons to teach and bring to the world.”
“Release, not relief.” What beautiful alliteration. I can’t imagine a more apt way to describe the work and intention of African Road.
I am grateful for the two weeks I was able to spend on the ground in Rwanda in late October and early November. Although I work intimately with African Road nearly every week as board chair, there is nothing like seeing the dreams of a community laid out on a soccer field construction site or like tasting the bread baked in the Togetherness Cooperative bakery. Waves of emotion flooded over me as I sat with the Ebenezer women’s Vicoba Plus group watching them sort their finances. I remembered being with them nearly five years ago as they learned how to run a business and work cooperatively. Now, they are experienced entrepreneurs with the confidence that comes from running a business and supporting their families.
As African Road turns ten years old in 2020 and looks ahead to what’s next, my conversations with Changemakers were vital to helping us celebrate and plan. What I heard was encouraging: our friends understand that we are about deep, sustainable change and they know the value of friendship. Together we have laughed, cried, succeeded and struggled, setting a foundation for deep and lasting shifts in communities. Even Emma, our trusted driver and on-the-ground logistics coordinator for ten years bears witness to it. He said to me, “African Road is a very persistent NGO. They stick to what they promise to people.”
Being a part of African Road is one of the greatest honors of my life. And Changemaker Penina Mukashema said it better than I can:
“African Road is love. African Road is self-awareness. African Road is inspiration. African Road is community. African Road is looking for how to help. People are becoming self-sustaining. They know that, ‘In me there is a solution. In me there is capacity, strength and energy.’ African Road is the reason people come to know that.’”