Conservative volunteers travel to Rwanda for Project Umubano

Andrew Mitchell, the Shadow International Development Secretary, will lead a group of around 100 volunteers in Rwanda for the third year of Project Umubano.

The group will depart this weekend, with some travelling to Sierra Leone as the Project branches into new countries.

The volunteers include Conservative MPs, (Mark Lancaster, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Nick Hurd, Desmond Swayne, Alistair Burt, and David Mundell), candidates, activists and members.

Andrew said the trip was an important opportunity to experience “the reality of life in a developing country”:

“No one pretends that we’ll be able to achieve more than a very modest amount in a fortnight. But there is no substitute for getting out on the ground and learning at first hand about the challenges of international development.”

He stressed that One World Conservatism, our recent Green Paper on aid and international development, had been shaped, in part, by lessons learned on the ground in Rwanda over the last two years.