2,030 Abibisika (Black Gold) Points

Rank: Unranked Newbie

“UBUDEHE” – Collective Work
Ubudehe in Rwanda is a traditional practice of collective cooperative work., that portrays the sense of unity as well as togetherness primarily for economic purposes. The Rwandans adopted the cultural practice of Ubudehe as a mechanism of working in groups and teams. This system for them promotes and strengthens socio-economic relationships between members of the community.

In the traditional system, it is practiced at two levels – family and community as a form of economic empowerment and as a means of fighting poverty, especially among the rural population. Rooted in cultural form of solidarity, both the men and women participated in Ubudehe, which involved the digging of fields before the rains along with the planting and the harvesting of the crops.

Because the system had always been a useful and effective traditional source of assistance, the government it is said to have revived it to serve “as a model for a program designed to alleviate poverty and provide for community rebuilding in the wake of the Rwandan genocide and civil war in the early 1990s.”.