Our Story
Our Story
Every Woman Deserves the Opportunity to Build a Future With Dignity
Women experiencing or exiting survival sex work in Rwanda often face barriers that cannot be solved by a job alone. DuHope walks alongside women as they heal, learn, prepare for opportunity, work, and build greater stability for themselves and their families.
Why DuHope exists
A Job Alone Cannot Undo Years of Instability
Survival sex work is rarely the only challenge a woman is facing. Limited education, financial insecurity, trauma, health concerns, family responsibilities, and limited access to safe and sustainable work can overlap.
That is why DuHope is built around a long-term pathway rather than a single intervention. The goal is not to rescue women or prescribe one future. It is to create the conditions, support, skills, and opportunities that help women make informed choices and build their own futures.
A pathway, not a project
A Pathway From Survival Toward Stability
Every woman's journey is different. DuHope provides connected support across five stages, with women moving forward at different speeds and receiving different kinds of support along the way.
Trust & Readiness
Trusted relationships and preparation to enter the pathway.
Healing & Stability
Counseling, health support, safe community, and day-to-day stability.
Learning & Capability
Literacy, numeracy, financial and life skills, and growing confidence.
Skills & Market Readiness
Vocational skills, work habits, quality standards, and preparation for employment or enterprise.
Work & Independence
Employment, enterprise, apprenticeships, sustainable income pathways, and transition support.
The pathway is not a straight line. Progress can include starts, stops, new challenges, and new choices. DuHope stays focused on the whole journey rather than promising a single outcome.
How we learned
DuHope Has Evolved With the Women We Serve
DuHope's early work created dignified production opportunities through artisan work. Over time, the team learned that sustainable change requires more than teaching a vocational skill or providing a job.
Today, DuHope's model connects healing, foundational learning, practical capability, market readiness, and individualized transition pathways. Artisan work can be one opportunity, but it is not the destination for every woman.
Women build the future.
DuHope guides and sustains the pathway.
Committed partners help provide the steady foundation that makes long-term support possible.
Where the name came from
The Meaning Behind DuHope
Before DuHope, Belay Global launched a Rwanda program called Duhugurane, meaning “Let us learn from each other” in Kinyarwanda. Shortened to “Duhu,” the program trained 190 young women in work readiness and microbusiness development. When DuHope began, the team knew the new work would need both lessons from Duhu and a whole lot of hope. From that idea, DuHope was born.
The DuHope logo reflects the same belief. Its lines do not form a perfect circle because transformation is not a clean, straight path. A journey can move forward, encounter setbacks, and begin again. DuHope's role is to keep walking alongside women through that process.
Steady support. Lasting hope.
She Builds Her Future. You Help Build the Foundation.
Healing, learning, preparation, and transition take time. Monthly Hope Builders help DuHope show up consistently as women move through the pathway.
Become a Hope Builder