Raising Up Women, Raising Up Rwanda with Mary Balikungeri of the Rwanda Women's Network

Meditation Without Borders – Being the Change Podcast

Thirty years ago, the world stood by as over 800,000 people were brutally killed in Rwanda over a period of 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 resilient individuals like Mary Kalikungeri.

We are so honored to have Mary as this month’s guest. She is the director of the Rwanda Women’s Network, as well as a member of the UN Women VAW – Peace and Security Reference Team, who has been at the vanguard of rebuilding and restoring Rwanda since 1995.

Beyond her fascinating personal story, Mary illuminates how she and other trailblazers recognized that women, as givers of life, held the key to rejuvenating their homeland. She created safe spaces for women who endured violence and empowering them to turn inward and recognize their inherent value. Mary's vision was transformative, cultivating women as leaders and catalysts for change within their communities and the nation at large.

The journey she and her counterparts undertook to turn their vision of a peaceful Rwanda into reality serves as a blueprint not only for regions entrenched in conflict worldwide but also as inspiration for individuals navigating their way out of profound darkness towards the light

In a collaborative effort, our non-profit organization, Meditation Without Borders, and Mary's organization, the Rwanda Women’s Network are joining forces to introduce Vedic Meditation to women in Rwanda. Together, we will host a four-day meditation retreat for women community leaders and changemakers, as well as going into the safe spaces to teach women who are victims of gender-based violence. For more information on this project or to contribute to this cause, please visit our page.

Show Notes:

2.18 Mary’s background

“Everything around us is about love. It´s about caring, it´s about welcoming people into the home. And it’s about giving yourself to others. Growing up feeling that way, it has accompanied me all my life all the way through.” Mary Balikungeri

6.30 All about family

9.00 Safe Spaces and the Journey of Women beyond the Genocide
“We came up with such an innovative idea of creating the safe spaces for women which allows the women to converge and eventually find each other; go through the process of healing. At the same time be able to rebuild the new communities, build the solidarity among themselves, and at the same time identify actual critical needs and beginning to plan their lives based on their priorities. And from that journey onwards we really have seen the lives of women transformed. Transformed in their own homes, taking leadership in their own communities. At the same time, also daring to take up leadership at the national level where we now see most of our women becoming women parliamentarians and even serving in the government.” Mary Balikungeri

11.50 Reconstructing the family – reconstructing the country
“The first cohort group of women started coming to the safe space. There were women who were looking sad. And the journey we took them through helped them to look inwardly and be able to think through on how to live in a better and a new Rwanda we were all yearning for.” Mary Balikungeri

14.00 The vision and journey of the women

“In putting the vision of what we are looking women to be for the future helped them also to accelerate and to get out of that bitterness, sadness; to really make them see themselves as women who are going to transform what has been impossible.” Mary Balikungeri

20.00 Emerging from the darkest darkness

26.00 Promoting gender equality through women empowerment

“We make sure that the women understood the power in herself.” Mary Balikungeri

30.00 Victimhood as a state of consciousness

32.00 Replicating this project in other countries

40.00 Othering

45.00 How to help

“We need to go through our self-healing. We do so much, and we forget ourselves.” Mary Balikungeri

52.00 Mary’s personal challenges and being a mother

“I think the whole in the line is to becoming a model mother that helps them also to see that your struggle was also for them. And I think the day I discovered that they saw that I felt I was at peace.” Mary Balikungeri

56.00 Generational Challenges

58.00 Meditation Without Borders in Rwanda and how to help