About Rwanda Partners

Rwanda Partners is a non-profit organization committed to fighting poverty and restoring hope to the poor and marginalized through economic and educational opportunities. In a country impacted by genocide, our work is grounded in the healing and reconciliation of the Rwandan people.

Fighting Poverty and Restoring Hope

Our Story

While the world looked away in 1994, as many as 1 million Rwandans were slaughtered during 100 days of genocide in the tiny East African country. Halfway around the planet in Bellevue, Tracy Stone's world was being turned upside down in its own way. Her unexpected divorce and new life as a single mother of two young daughters left her reeling.

At the time Tracy's marriage was ending, a co-worker told her about a woman in Texas named Mary who had a ministry to abandoned women throughout the world. Tracy reached out to Mary for support and found her life transformed. At the time, Mary was preparing to go into Rwanda shortly after the end of the genocide to help care for the traumatized women survivors there. She asked Tracy to be praying for her time in Rwanda, and as Tracy prayed, Mary sent her stories of the women she was meeting. Through these stories, Tracy found herself surrounded by other women like her who were suffering great loss. The stories comforted Tracy and encouraged her that she could make it through this difficult season in her life- just like Rwanda’s women were making it.

For years, Tracy stayed in contact with Mary and thought about the women of Rwanda, but with two young girls to raise and a remarriage, she put Rwanda on the backburner. All that changed in 2004, the 10th anniversary of the genocide, when she found herself drawn again to Rwanda.

Tracy was able to share her thoughts about her concern for the women of Rwanda with members of a Rwandan delegation traveling with President Paul Kagame during his trip to Seattle in April 2004. Three months later, Tracy led 17 members from her church, First Presbyterian of Bellevue, on her first visit to Rwanda to work alongside the Rwandan people as they sought to launch a new focus on restoring hope to Rwanda.

In Rwanda, Tracy was able to tell the women of Rwanda what their stories had meant to her during her own time of suffering. But she knew in Rwanda that she needed to do much more to help these courageous women. After coming home, Tracy quit her job, and she and her husband Greg started up Rwanda Partners to help "the poorest of the poor" in Rwanda with education, health care, economic development and reconciliation. Since 2004, Rwanda Partners has gone on to become an international organization, affecting thousands of people every year, fighting poverty and restoring hope.

Yet, Rwanda Partners hasn’t forgotten their beginnings – that they were founded on mutual brokenness an experience of pain between the women of Rwanda and the US.

(Read this story from the Seattle Post Intelligencer) www.SeattlePI.com

In 2006, Peabody award film maker Mark Stendal documented Tracy’s story, culminating in the film Journey out of Fear. You can watch this Emmy nominated film here: