IBUKA, the umbrella body of survivor’s organisations in Rwanda, published today its first newsletter, which reports news of the 15 members that operate under its umbrella.

IBUKA will publish this newsletter at least twice a year, which will set out and provide a vehicle for us all to learn more about the situation of survivors of the genocide in Rwanda today.

SURF has supported the newsletter, first through funding from Comic Relief through a capacity building grant, and then through the work of Project Umubano this summer. As well, a special thank you to Claire Cohen and Isabel Milner who gave up two days of their holiday to Rwanda to work on the editing of the newsletter.

The newsletter can be downloaded from here:

I paste below an excerpt from my introduction in the newsletter:

Though we all know the importance of the work that we undertake, we often fail to commit the resources required to effectively monitor and evaluate that work. Visiting the programmes it is not hard to understand why funding is prioritised for survivors in need, even if that is at the expense of reports that need to be written.

However, it is communication that is critical to bring such reports to the awareness of donors. It is these donors that can help realise the potential of programmes which we too often keep known only to ourselves. In so doing, we can raise the funding to enable us to scale up our work to provide support to the many more survivors still in need of support.

To that end, this newsletter serves. It is a first, but important, step in a more strategic communications plan lead by IBUKA. I congratulate all that have contributed articles – and appeal to the donors on whose desk this may fall, to join us in our work to help rebuild the lives of survivors through supporting the organisations featured here.

What we are continuing to learn is that communication matters, though it is only as important as the action it inspires.