Raising Up Women
| Raising Up Rwanda
Vedic Meditation Teaching Tour – March 2024 + March 2025
“For these four days, I learned to think about me and love myself.”
In March 2024, Meditation Without Borders traveled to Rwanda in partnership with the Rwanda Women’s Network as a pilot program to teach the staff members of RWN along with the women they serve. In March 2025, we plan to return to Rwanda teach Vedic Meditation to teach at Berwa Kinunu, an organization that helps teen mothers with life and technical skills and psychosocial counseling, at Foyer Inge Baho Cooperative, a co-op for women that provides vocational support for widows of the genocide. We also will be hosting another four-day “Mothers of Rwanda” meditation retreat for women leaders on the national and community level.
Three decades ago, the global community witnessed the horrifying genocide in Rwanda, claiming the lives of over 800,000 people in a mere three and a half months. The aftermath seemed insurmountable, yet today, Rwanda stands as one of Africa's safest destinations, boasting a stable political environment. This remarkable transformation is indebted, in large part, to organizations like the Rwanda Women’s Network.
Mary Balikungeri, founder of the Rwanda Women’s Network, and other trailblazers, realized that women, as givers of life, were the key to bringing life back to their homeland. RWN creates safe spaces for women who endure violence and encourages them to turn inward in order realize their value and potential to be leaders in their own right as well as change-makers of their community and the entire nation. ‘
Evidence shows meditation has the power to help heal trauma and release toxic stress.
In a collaborative effort, Meditation Without Borders joined forces in 2024 with the Rwanda Women's Network to support the women who have been victims of gender-based violence, most of whom are also genocide survivors, as well as the change-makers that are tirelessly working to bring peace and harmony to their communities by offering them a simple mental technique to calm the mind, relax the body, and dissolve the lifetime of stress and trauma many have suffered.
“We make sure women understand the power of themselves.”
Together, we introduced Vedic Meditation to to these “Mothers of Rwanda,” by organizing a luxurious four-day meditation retreat on Lake Kivu at the Rushel Kivu Resort for those who work for the RWN, fourteen women in total. Additionally, we imparted the practice to twenty-two women from two of the RWN safe spaces.
This first trip was our pilot program to iron out logistics and see if the meditation practice would be well received by the rural community women with the goal of returning if all went well. The experience far exceeded our expectations, and we are currently raising funds to return in 2025 to teach in more organizations, including Berwa Kinunu and Foyer Inge Baho Cooperative in partnership with Odette Nyiramilimo as well as another four-day “Mothers of Rwanda” meditation retreat for women in leadership roles within the Rwandan national government as well as local community leaders.
Donate to support this movement
We are raising funds for our March 2025 return trip to Rwanda. This will be an even more robust teaching tour in partnership with Odette Nyiramilimo, Berwa Kinunu and Foyer Inge Baho Cooperative and the second of what we hope will be many trips. Your invaluable assistance can make a meaningful impact from any corner of the globe. We firmly believe in the transformative power of even the smallest gestures, knowing that every action has the potential to bring about positive change.
About Mary Balikungari and the Rwanda Women’s Network
Mary Balikungeri is the director of the Rwanda Women’s Network, a member of the UN Women VAW – Peace and Security Reference Team, and has been at the vanguard of rebuilding and restoring Rwanda since 1995. The Rwanda Women’s Network, founded by Mary Balikungeri in 1997, has been establishing safe spaces for women across Rwanda. Initially the safe spaces were built to support women who were victims of gender based violence during the genocide against the Tutsi, often infected with HIV, and simply had no place to seek help. Throughout the years, the safe spaces grew to also function as community and family centers.
Currently Mary and the team at RWN oversees 17 safe spaces across 7 districts. They also provide healthcare to over 29K community members in our owned and operated medical clinic in Kigali.
Listen to our interview with Mary Balikungeri, the founder of RWN
About Odette Nyiramilimo, Berwa Kinunu and Foyer Inge Baho
Odette Nyiramilimo is a physician who with her husband founded the first private maternity and pediatrics clinic in Rwanda as well as being a doctor for the Peace Corps, and she also served as a senator and as Minister of State for Social Affairs under the government of Paul Kagame. Her account of the genocide is featured heavily in book “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families” by Philip Gourevitch and is also depicted as a character in the film Hotel Rwanda. She now believes that wellness is the path to helping continue the reconstruction, so she founded the Rushel Kivu Lodge on Lake Kivu, where we host our “Mothers of Rwanda” retreats.
She currently plays a major role in multiple local organizations that support women in the Lake Kivu region of Rwanda.
One of these organizations is Berwa Kinunu, an organization that provides teen mothers with life and technical skills in the form of tailoring training, childcare courses and pscychosocial counseling directly contributing to alleviating poverty among single mothers of Boneza, Mushonyi, Musasa, and Ruhango Sectors.
Another one is Foyer Inge Baho Cooperative which provides woodcarving, weaving and knitting vocational support for widows of the Rwandan genocide.
Listen to our interview with Odette Nyiramilimo
Odette Nyiramilimo on her experience with meditation
About Meditation Without Borders
Meditation Without Borders is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2019 by Kristen Vandivier and Isabel Keoseyan who shared a common vision that the powerful technique of Vedic Meditation is the most effective catalyst for the unifying social change our world needs.
After completing an intensive curriculum of training under renowned Master Maharishi Vyasananda Thom Knoles, including a three-month immersion program in the Himalayas, Kristen and Isabel returned to their homes to found their practices in 2017. Isabel now has a thriving meditation community in Mexico City and Kristen teaches students from all over the Bay Area, California in addition to caring for her three children. .
“The Rwanda Women’s Network is already doing so much for these women. We are simply adding to their tool kit by giving them a technique to deeply heal from the inside out.”
*We would like to acknowledge that we are looking to teach a spiritually based practice in a continent that has been greatly harmed by colonialism and its attempted destruction of native customs and belief systems. As two white women of privilege from a historically colonizing culture, we wish to make a statement that our intentions are to bring a self-sustaining, empowering practice to the women of Rwanda that will not interfere with any existing traditions. We recognize that the powerful knowledge of Vedic Meditation which originated in India, another colonized area, has spread to the West, and has pooled up in mostly white advantaged communities. Our mission is to help break the dam, and be a bridge to help this knowledge flow to all those who could benefit from it.