Rebuild
Women's
Hope
Rebuilding the
Hope of a Nation
On Idjwi Island, in the middle of Lake Kivu in eastern Congo, Marcelline Budza founded Rebuild Women's Hope (RWH) in 2013, inspired by her own mother's resilience. Her belief guides the cooperative: building the hope of women is building the hope of an entire nation. RWH gives farmers interest-free pre-harvest loans, repaid in cash or in coffee cherries, so families are never forced to sell cheap out of season.
“Building the hope of women is building the hope of the entire nation.”
Marcelline Budza — Founder, Rebuild Women’s Hope
In 2020, RWH opened a maternal and pediatric clinic on the island and a women's center offering literacy classes, business training, and income skills like sewing. Farmers who meet their cherry delivery goals earn livestock, a goat or a cow, which strengthens household income and food security. Four washing stations now serve the island's farmers, most of them women.
Farmers deliver cherries grown at up to 2,000 meters to four washing stations along the lake. The coffee is sorted, depulped, and soaked for 8 hours, then dried on raised beds for up to 24 days.
Market access and logistics remain hard on the island. RWH keeps women at the center of everything it runs, from coffee production to community development.
Technical Data
Where it Grows
Idjwi Island sits in the middle of Lake Kivu in eastern DR Congo, one of the most remote and botanically extraordinary coffee-growing regions on earth. Rebuild Women’s Hope farmers work its high-altitude volcanic slopes, between 1,480 and 2,000 meters above sea level.
See The Farm
Photographs from Idjwi Island — the washing stations, the drying beds, the women behind every cup. Click any image to view full screen.
