Rema Ministries
Refugee camps, Tanzania and Burundi
Rema Ministries is run by a group of Burundian refugees who met in Nairobi in the late 1990s having fled the genocide in their own country. They met at Bible College and decided to devote themselves to serving fellow refugees.
Today, Rema Ministries supports a community of refugees on the outskirts of Nairobi, visits the Tanzanian camps regularly and is beginning work back in Burundi now that refugees are starting to return home. Working through local churches, they concentrate on four areas: peace and reconciliation, pastor training, evangelism and HIV and AIDS.
The HIV and AIDS work focuses on mobilising and empowering local churches to meet the needs of their communities with the limited resources they have. They run training workshops helping groups of churches to work together and develop strategies for caring for thousands of people affected by HIV and AIDS.
At the start of our partnership, iThemba provided a one-off grant to enable the training of 11 people in Nairobi to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS and begin a home-based care programme amongst refugees. Some of these people later travelled to Ulyankulu and other Tanzanian camps to train others in this vital work. Following the success of this initial programme, iThemba partnered with Rema in 2006 to enable the team to bring its orphan support training programme to Ulyankulu and Mtabila Camps as well as Nairobi.
iThemba and Rema are now continuing the partnership to extend the orphan support training programme to Mishamo Camp and also set-up the first Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centres in Ulyankulu and Mishamo. As refugees continue to return home, Rema is also increasing its work with pastors back home in Burundi.
> Rema mobilises local churches
> iThemba’s Dr Liz Ling visits a Rema training programme in Ulyankulu
> Outcomes from orphan support training programme
> Tanzania country profile
> Burundi country profile
> More about prevention and education
> More about counselling and testing
> More about orphan care
