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When a ranger loses his life in the line of duty, his full salary continues to reach his family for six months. A bridge through the most devastating period of
loss. That transitions into a permanent pension and ongoing medical care, so that financial precarity does not compound grief. And because money alone is not enough, the project goes further: widows are offered vocational training in park workshops, building skills and income that belong to them, and a place within the Virunga community that no one can take away. Through vocational training in park workshops, and particularly through the Sewing Workshop, widows gain a trade and an income that is genuinely their own, a foundation for a future shaped by more than the loss they have carried.
The Sewing Workshop: Craft, Community, and Healing
The Sewing Workshop is the heart of the Virunga Widows Project as visitors experience it. It is a park cooperative where widows gather to produce artisanal linens: table runners, napkins, and household textiles made by hand with care and skill. But it is more than a production space. It is a place where women who share an extraordinary grief come together, build friendships, support one another’s children, and find meaning in daily work.
How Your Support Contributes
The Virunga Widows Project is sustained by donations, park revenues, and the purchases visitors make at the Sewing Workshop. Every item bought is a direct contribution to the income of a widow and her children. Every donation to the Virunga Foundation helps extend the pension, medical, and training programs that underpin the project. The rangers who died protecting Virunga’s gorillas made an irreplaceable sacrifice, supporting the widows and children they left behind is one of the most concrete ways travelers can honor what that sacrifice meant.
