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Dignity in the Cards

Cards from Africa (CfA), based in Kigali, Rwanda, manufactures beautiful hand-crafted greeting cards and other paper products for all occasions.

CfA seeks to break the cycle of poverty for orphaned youth by providing stable employment, fair wages, and job training through a nurturing, highly creative environment – all with the goal of teaching them the skills to one day start their own business.

The card makers are all young people who lead their families because they have lost their parents to the 1994 genocide, HIV/AIDS, or other illnesses. Through this business, the card makers can provide food, medicine, clothing, and education to themselves and their younger brothers and sisters.

CfA also practices environmental sustainability by producing handmade papers locally. The business takes local office waste, pulps the paper, and then creates a wide assortment of beautifully textured and colored handmade papers.

“Sustainable business development is the key to lifting Rwanda, the most densely populated African nation, out of poverty,” CfA’s founder Christopher Page notes. Today, over 90% of the country is dependent on subsistence farming and pressure on the land is extreme. The vast majority of the population struggles to scratch out a meager existence and often cannot afford the education necessary to improve their situation. Rwanda's dependence on foreign aid, an amount higher than its business earnings, is equally unsustainable. As Page says, “CfA believes that a country's inability to choose its own path of development is neither dignifying nor just.”

CfA’s business model provides a stepping stone to those who would otherwise not be employed by offering well-paid employment to those who need it the most and enabling them to transition to another career or start their own business someday. CfA is currently developing a program to effectively teach entrepreneurial, management and practical business skills to its staff. By unleashing creativity, teaching valuable skills, and fostering self-worth, CfA hopes to develop workers who will be able to access the international market themselves and contribute to a better quality of life for all Rwandans.