My name is Karimunda Sabine, and I live in Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi. I had the privilege of completing the EMIT Women’s Leadership School, an experience that has changed the way I see myself, my abilities, and my responsibility toward my community.
Through EMIT’s small-group training model, my teammates and I learned that leadership is not only about gaining knowledge. It is about applying what we learn to create meaningful and sustainable change. The training challenged us to move from dependency toward responsibility, initiative, and self-reliance.
The EMIT subjects Business Skills 1, Business Skills 2, and Project & Time Management were especially important to us. They gave us practical tools to think differently about the resources, opportunities, and abilities we already had. Instead of continuing to wait for outside assistance, we began asking a different question: What can we do with what we have? Together, our group decided to put our learning into action by starting a small Liquid soap production initiative in Bujumbura.
What began as a simple idea became a practical way for us to generate income and help provide for our daily needs. But the impact did not stop with us.
One of the most important principles we learned through EMIT is that transformed leaders should help transform others. Those who received training began sharing their knowledge and experience with other people. In this way, new people are being equipped to take responsibility, develop practical skills, and become agents of change in their own families and communities.
The impact is now beginning to extend beyond our original group into communities around Bujumbura.
Our soap-making initiative represents something much bigger than a product. It represents a change in mindset, from waiting to acting, from dependency to responsibility, and from receiving knowledge to multiplying it.
Madam Karimunda Sabine | Bujumbura, Burundi
As one participant expressed:
“Before, we were waiting for help that never came. Now we are making our own way. This project has given us dignity and hope.”
This story first appeared in the EMIT Newsletter, Third Quarter 2026.