The Next Normal: Adapting Programming During Covid-19

In response to the development of Covid-19, The Women’s Bakery moved quickly to pause bakery operations, with baker’s livelihoods and safety as our top priority. With this change came drastic modifications in our day-to-day work lives and programming. We are fortunate to have incredibly bright and brave women on our team who adapted to these changes with grace. 

Our Whole Woman Programming is a comprehensive collection of programs meant to support and empower strong women baking bread. This includes a wide range of initiatives, such as financial literacy training, gender equity workshops, and mental health counseling. Social Impact Officer, Ruth Uwera, recognized the heightened importance of mental health counseling in the uncertain moment a pandemic creates, in addition to the week set aside in Rwanda in early April for grieving and remembering lives lost during the Genocide against the Tutsi. So, Ruth worked courageously to shift this service to support strong women’s wellbeing by modifying counseling to be virtual. By mid-April, Ruth made sure every baker was offered virtual counseling via phone and that every woman felt supported. Not to be forgotten, Ruth also included our male delivery drivers in her counseling initiative. 

Ruth reflects, “TWB saw the importance and opportunity to offer online counseling, and it was a huge support to the employees during these times of lockdown and commemoration in our country.” Similar to individuals in the United States and across the globe, many strong women expressed their worries for the future and what life would look like after the lockdown. Ruth responded with an important reminder: “We are one family. There is no need to fear what will happen in the future because we will get through this difficult time together, and we will rise above it as long as we are turikumwe (together).”