Peace and prosperity are the focus of our work in the Great Lakes Region – Rwanda/Burundi/ Eastern Congo and Kenya
Through pastoral training, economic development, and the integration of reconciliation programs into the culture, we are partnering with local groups who envision their nations transformed through a wholistic biblical worldview.

An exciting new partner is the Karisimbi Business Partners. Through management capacity building services, they will walk alongside businesses to establish sustainable, high-impact ventures, thereby developing the economy and well-being of the nation. Their goals are to alleviate poverty, improve community, shape industry and inspire others, one business at a time. They are not starting new businesses but mentoring and consulting those who are able to lead medium to large businesses.

A Reconciliation Coalition, comprised of different ministries, various networks and influential leaders was formed to be involved in a more radical way in bringing Rwandans to a place of individual healing, forgiveness, repentance and reconciliation. Churches partnered together with this coalition for a week of reconciliation in July 2009, climaxing in a “Day of Repentance” to draw the entire nation together. Read more about how the Rwandan Church is taking leadership in the reconciliation movement.

There is a vision for a Reconciliation and Peacemaking Institute in Rwanda. This will link knowledge, stories and research to schools and institutions as tools to better empower the educational process toward national unity. As a part of this work, we hope to set up a system to create seamless education for peacemaking through a partnership with EPPC (Education Public Policy Consulting).  

CARSA, an organization of young leaders, is working to free young people from the anger and bitterness of the genocide and to teach responsible citizenship that honors the Lord Jesus Christ. We are partnering with them to bring hope for the future to the younger generation in Rwanda. Click here for their website.

Another group, Channel of Nations Healing Ministry (CONAHEM), has been formed out of the Samaritan Strategy Africa. Their four areas of focus are:  Economic Development, Education, Capacity Building, and Reconciliation. Under the capacity building piece, they have already begun to train local pastors in a Biblical worldview and hope to have English classes soon. They are initiating and planning projects out of the needs of the community and with the resources that they have available.

Biblical worldview training has spread to Burundi as well as war-torn areas of Congo DR. We will expand it to include the financial teaching of the Chalmers Center curriculum. This will be critical in the development of small businesses such as the Fresh Food Market that Christophe, one of our partners, dreams of starting. This collaborative effort envisions hundreds of new jobs, is sustainable and replicable, and is locally owned and managed. We are blessed to be a part of this kind of new thinking!

Breakthrough Partners is also working with the extreme poor and vulnerable in Rwanda. In the slums of Kibera we partner with groups who minister to prostitutes, street children and HIV/AIDS sufferers. Encouragement and skills training, Bible teaching and even summer interns were a part of our work here this past year. These interns have come back to the US and initiated their own ministry, Hope for Life, to get street boys out of jail and into homes.