It was Saturday early morning and Peter and I were heading to the nearby sports club for our pre-booked tennis training. To our disappointment (waking up 6am on the weekend even for a tennis fan like me is challenging), we arrived only to find out that the club is closed.
Maybe you are already wondering about the connection between the tennis club and the featured picture. The connection is, as you rightly guessed, Umuganda.
But before I explain the meaning of this term, I would like to share something I noticed in my own reaction when we found the club gate closed. I think it clearly shows how spoiled I’ve become after having lived in more developed countries for so many years. For instance, if this happened in Moscow, I would have expected the club to inform me well in advance, and thus would have been really angry at them for not having done this.
I didn’t feel angry this time. Instead, I thought that we’ve probably missed something and there is a good reason for the club to be closed. I was trying to understand the situation. Long story short, I firmly believe that moving to a new country raises your awareness, empathy and willingness to show understanding towards the local culture, customs and rituals. Because this is when your mind and senses are widely open..
According to Rwandapedia, Umuganda can be described as community work. More precisely, it is translated as “coming together in common purpose to achieve an outcome”. This practice takes place on the last Saturday of every month, when members of the local communities come together to do some public works, such as infrastructure development and environmental protection (e.g. building schools, medical centers, creating highly productive agricultural plots). It was introduced by the Government of Rwanda as one of the Home Grown Solutions for sustainable development programs.
The statistics say that about 80% of Rwandans aged 18-65 y.o. participate in Umuganda. The value of Umuganda to the country’s development since 2007 has been estimated at more than US $60 million!
Does this ring a bell to you? At least a little bit?
Maybe for those of you who grew up in Bulgaria, Umuganda reminds of the “Ленински съботник” (“Leninski sybotnik”) from our childhood when people would come out and get together to clean their yards, public parks, paint fences etc. Apart from this really nice memory, Umuganda rings one more bell to me – the concept of the so called “collaborative economy” (also defined as “sharing economy”). This is a very new term (was introduced into Oxford English Dictionary in 2015) and it generally describes “an economic system that unlocks the value of underused assets by matching needs and haves, in ways that bypass traditional middlemen”.
Why I am sharing all of this? Because I truly believe that more countries should introduce Umuganda, and we in Bulgaria should get back our “Leninski sybotnik” (well, maybe under a different name:-). I also think that these practices are versions of the modern term “collaborative economy” which is emerging right now in some parts of the world.
This is a topic that has been gaining my attention for quite some time now, and I would be happy to hear what you think about it, dear readers.
Your thoughts are more than welcome!
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