The Power of Bread Gives Back Life to Women

The Women’s Bakery provides social and economic opportunities for women by training them to build, operate, manage and sustain businesses. This helps the Rwandese women to develop their living standards in all aspects.

As the Monitoring & Evaluation Coordinator, it is my job to check in with our women and understand their experience so we can better inform how we do what we do.

Recently, I had the opportunity of visiting the women who are working with at TWB's Remera branch. A large portion of the day was spent receiving feedback and insights from the women.

As a group, they are loving their time at TWB and notably, have been seeing the advantage of working as a team. On an individual level, most of the women shared that they used to eat once per day and they did not have a job, however, now they have jobs and are able to feed themselves and their families. Their kids are now in school and they feed them nutritious food, too.

One of our long-time TWB bakers noted that working at TWB has enabled her to, “pay for my rent and have hope for the better future.” Upon reflection, another baker shared that “we have people who always think about us…this encourages us to work hard for a better future.”

Lastly, one of the more telling anecdotal points from a TWB baker was that, “I love TWB they took me from tough situation someone like me who doesn’t know how to read and write but still give the opportunity to work with them…that shows me how much they value us.”

Indeed, the power of bread gives back life because it not only enables job and community nutrition, but the opportunities for improved livelihoods. That’s bread power.

What Do We Do With the Data?

Behind the scenes at The Women’s Bakery, we have been working hard to collect data to help inform and grow our programming.

One of the main monitoring and evaluation tools we use is a baseline survey, which is taken at the beginning of training, six months after, and each year subsequently. It is lengthy and includes many questions that can help us identify changes in livelihood including topic areas regarding health, nutrition, income, education, expenditure, and self-confidence.

This baseline has been updated and enhanced six times this year with help and input from a variety of interns, friends, and professionals.

Over the course of the past two years, the data collected has helped us to improve our programming. For instance, we anticipated that women working in the bakery for six months or more would choose to use their income to pay for national health insurance, Mutuelle. We were wrong. We reacted by starting to include health insurance for the women and their families as a benefit to their employment at the bakery.

Additionally, we anticipated women would feel confident in having the right knowledge and increased spending power to purchase more nutritious food. We were wrong. We reacted by creating an eight-part curriculum series to be taught over a group lunches at the bakeries. One lesson per week for eight weeks.

We are learning from our mistakes and helping to grow our programs as we go. While data collection and analysis takes a long time, it is crucial for our success.