The Cabinet last week gave the green light for the setting up of the regional headquarters of The Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund (Tearfund) in Rwanda. Tearfund is a UK-based Christian charity with a presence in some 50 countries worldwide. The charity says it tackles "poverty and injustice through sustainable development, by responding to disasters and challenging injustice. We believe an end to extreme poverty is possible.”

Rwanda will host its East and Central Africa head office, which covers nine countries, namely; Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda.

The New Times’ ALICE KAGINA and BETTER BENIGNE UHIRIWE caught up with Emmanuel Murangira, Country Director, Tearfund Rwanda.

Below are excerpts:

Tell us about Tearfund and its involvement with Rwanda

Tearfund is an international Christian relief and development organisation founded by churches in the United Kingdom in 1968 and it operates in 50 countries. In Rwanda, Tearfund started its charitable projects in 1969 for internally displaced people in Bugesera and Rukumberi in collaboration with the Anglican and Baptist Churches.

From there, they went into long-term development with a focus on health and environment which was implemented in different parts of the country.

In 2006, Tearfund changed course by establishing country offices and it was not until 2008 that the office of Rwanda and Burundi opened. Our work focuses on community empowerment, in partnership with local churches to enable people to achieve whole-life transformation.

Why did you choose Rwanda as hosts of the regional office?

Rwanda was at the top of the peak among other countries involved as we went through a global review of the organisation’s international programme to put in place regional offices.

There is a lot that is going on in Rwanda; a good working environment, favourable investment climate and the ease of establishing offices were among factors considered while choosing a host country. And that’s the direction Rwanda is taking in a sense that it seeks to establish itself as a regional hub.

How do you get to work with governments?

As a Christian organization, we are called for the world. We work for the people and we can’t exclusively work off the government, otherwise, we are likely not to achieve our objectives.

How does hosting the regional office benefit Rwanda?

Having the regional offices in Rwanda means we have more fundraising capacity, easy access as a country office since we are the ones that work directly with Rwandans and that means we can be more versatile, more resources coming in and muscles to build around that.

Employment and quality jobs, along with other intrinsic benefits for Rwanda, which is becoming a hub for businesses and organisations.

You cannot remove NGOs from the whole economy, both locally and internationally, when we made that bold move to set up our offices here, other organisations from Integral Alliance Network saw it was possible, some are already here.

Where do you intend to have the regional office and how many employees are we talking about?

We are looking at having the office at Kacyiru (in Kigali) where the current country office is, with 25-30 employees of different expertise from various countries.

However, the Tearfund policy is to employ as many Rwandans as possible, for it is cost effective and it also helps grow skills of local people. Around 12 of them (employees for the regional office) are Rwandans.

What informs your programmes in Rwanda?

We work within the boundaries of National Strategy for Transformation (NST1) and we align our interventions with the priorities of the Rwandan government. As of the moment, there are projects that fit into the economic empowerment project in areas of agriculture and livestock development for sustainable livelihoods.

There will definitely be other projects that will come up because they follow a cycle, but the Rwanda country office which has been here for a while will continue to work on its current projects.

I expect that there will be some more projects because we will have more fundraising capacity with the help of a regional director who is a very good fundraiser, we now have "the teeth” to go into funding agencies and raise some more money for other (regional) countries as well.

With this regional office in Rwanda, do you see any impact in terms of diplomacy among the countries involved?

We work at a level that might not necessarily influence the relationship in a greater way. I believe the government of Rwanda does not depend on NGOs in how it relates with other countries.

It is our strong belief that Rwanda has a robust diplomatic policy but we would definitely want to promote these good relations at our working level.