Through the Good Gifts Catalogue, Survivors Fund (SURF) supports a number of livestock projects which provide vital assistance to genocide survivors, in particular vulnerable genocide widows.
One of the projects provides ducks through supporters that buy Ducks for Peace from the Catalogue. For just £18, that is enough to make a sustainable difference to the life of a widow, as well as for those in her care. Gaudence is one such widow…
Gaudence lives 40 minutes from Kigali City in a village called Nyamata. She has three children.
She received six ducks last year from Good Gifts. Three of the ducks already have ducklings and she was able to sell eight, two months old, ducklings for Frw 6,000 (£6) each. Soon she will have about four ducks hatching and will have more ducklings to sell. Gaudence lives near the Nyamata trading center and has ready market access for the ducklings when they hatch.
“With the money from the ducks, I was able to afford medical insurance for myself and my three children. When I sell more ducks at the end of next month I plan to buy a goat and later in the year buy a cow”.
She says she likes ducks because before the genocide she had ducks and she earned a living from them. She added that taking care of them helps her to keep busy and not to think about herself, something which she used to do before getting the ducks.
