Azizi Life Inc

Azizi Life began in 2008 as an initiative of the Christian non-profit, Food for the Hungry. Through a business development program, we met a number of rural Rwandan Artisans. What we saw was that the artisans had skills, organization and leadership. They had vision for the future. They were from impoverished communities, but had a means to rise up. The problem was this: although the artisans could sell their crafts to their neighbours or through a middleman, the income they earned was insufficient to support their families. In some cases, they didn’t even cover the cost of the raw materials! Azizi Life was formed and began to work with these artisans and serve as a bridge to customers around the world; however, the vision did not stop there; right from inception there was a belief that through using multiple social enterprises it was possible to create a self-sustaining development model. The idea was to set up businesses that were not only beneficial to rural communities in themselves; but also profitable enough to support other community work – those things that are needed in the rural communities, but were beyond the scope and ability of the businesses to provide – and so the Azizi Life group was born. Currently in Rwanda the group is made up of three Social Enterprises that pay into a local non-profit that runs a range of impact projects, providing for Adult Literacy training, Renewable Resources, Bible Distribution and Bee Keeper Training.