GreenStone Chief Credit Officer, Paul Anderson, began his career in the Farm Credit System 40 years ago. Born and raised in Wisconsin, his journey started there but 14 years ago he made the move across the lake to Michigan to pursue a new position when he was honored to be selected as the Chief Credit Officer. Paul intends to finish out his career with GreenStone, but he has a few goals outside of the office that he also hopes to accomplish, including furthering the partnership with rural communities in Rwanda.
The location of his home may have changed, but his faith has stayed the same. Through the Free Methodist Church, he became involved with a partnership with Buhoro, a rural community in southwest Rwanda. In 2017, his church began sponsoring and supporting children so they could attend school up in the mountains that provides education to 800 kids. Paul and two other church members recently traveled to the community where he visited the church, the school, the families, and learned more about potential agricultural partnerships that can be made with the community. While there he noticed faith, family, and friendship echoed through everyone.
“No matter what difficulties these families have faced, they are still so appreciative of everything and look at life in a positive light. They are dedicated to their faith and families, and the unity among the community is the same that I see here between the farmers across Michigan and Wisconsin. Even though they are across the globe from us, we share the same values,” Paul exclaimed.
Due to the elevation, rough terrain, and low income, these students may walk up to 45 minutes each way each day to attend class. Along with the long journey, students also must pay to attend the school. For 90% of the community, their income comes from agriculture. Due to the mountainous terrain, they primarily grow subsidence crops such as casaba, potatoes, and beans. Rice is purchased from growers in the lowlands. The next level of wealth in the community is animal agriculture, bananas and coffee. The levels of wealth depend on the type of agriculture the families are involved in. For example, coffee provides the highest level of wealth.
Children in Rwanda share their experiences with Paul.
“At such a high elevation, there are lots of coffee trees and that becomes a large cash crop for families. Having coffee trees is what makes the difference of families living in mud hut homes with banana leaf roofs and dirt floors vs homes with steel roofs and cement walls and floors,” explained Paul.
The families with coffee trees are able to send their children to school but the majority of the families are only able to select one child to send due to the cost. Paul’s church steps in to solve this disadvantage by sponsoring multiple students. They currently sponsor 42 children with a goal of reaching 100 sponsored children yet this year
“If you educate a child, you can give them a chance at life because one thing you can never take away from someone is their education and knowledge. When I was a kid, I was told go get your degree and get educated because that’s something no one can take away from you,” Paul said.
Along with the church congregation sponsoring students, GreenStone has donated multiple computers to the teachers. Before the donation, the school had only 3 computers for the 30 teachers to share.
“One of the most surprising things about the village is their cell reception and internet quality. Most people assume that teachers wouldn’t be able to use the computers anyways; however, the technology infrastructure in Rwanda, it is actually better than the cell tower infrastructure in many parts of rural Michigan. In Perry, Michigan I have one or two bars of cell service, but 8,000 feet in the mountains there I had 4 solid bars and could see the nearest cell tower,” Paul said.
The partnership between GreenStone, Paul’s church, and the village is just beginning, but has a bright future ahead. “Right now, we are just starting the sponsorship, the education, and telling the story. The goal is to be able to take some teachers back to the village to spend time there teaching, building personal connections, and mentoring. Satellite connectivity and the computers will allow the teachers to connect after we leave. Then we can all continue to improve the quality of education provided via the continued exchange of best practices. The goal is to provide these children with a helping hand up and maximize the opportunity to be successful wherever life takes them. Remote work via technology provides an exciting opportunity to improve the economics of the local community. We don’t want the kids to have to go to town for jobs, instead we want the jobs to come to them,” he said.
The goal is to also take on agricultural projects that act as a multiplier of value for the community. There are significant opportunities to increase the investment in value added agriculture starting at a very basic level of improved diets, and commodity sales of high value crops such as coffee. The popular animals for animal agriculture in the area start with rabbits and goats, and move up to hogs and livestock. Rabbits because of how fast they reproduce, goats, hogs and livestock for the manure - fertilizer for the soil. Cows are considered an extremely valuable product, and they are historically sign of wealth for families in Rwanda.
“Cows have always been a status symbol, they are considered valuable due to production of milk (infants) and fertilizer (all crops),” Paul explained. “We hope to help them increase the amount of revenue that is generated from the land.”
Paul has already begun preparation for the next trip. He hopes to have a return trip sometime in 2024 or 2025 to take the next steps toward achieving more of the group’s mission and goals.
One of GreenStone's CoreFour Values is Getting Involved and we're proud of our teammates who support communities globally through a variety of avenues, including partnerships like this. Learn more about our community outreach and engagement efforts on our Outreach webpage.
