Blue Marble to Open Rwanda's First Ice Cream Shop

Sweet Dreams Rwanda

When we interviewed Blue Marble Ice Cream founders Jennie and Alexis back in 2008, they said they were "in the middle of our first fundraising effort" for Blue Marble Dreams, the Brooklyn-based company's non-profit organization. That initial effort has since become a reality as the ice cream parlor Sweet Dreams ("Inzozi Nziza" in Kinyarwanda) will finally open next week in the Rwandan city of Butare. The country's first-ever ice cream parlor, Sweet Dreams is the "pilot initiative" of Blue Marble's exploration into "ice cream's potential to inspire joy and spur economic growth," according to the non-profit's website.

Sweet Dreams is not just about getting ice cream to that ridiculously warm country, though that's a noble cause in itself. Blue Marble Dreams, with the aid of Business Council for Peace (Bpeace), trained 17 Rwandan women in customer service, business management and personal finance. The women, who in many cases "have received very little formal education," will run the ice cream shop and retain the profits after the grand opening on June 5th, fulfilling one of the Jennie and Alexis' goals of providing "sustainable, gainful employment for local women."

The heartwarming doesn't stop there. With a nod to the locavore sensibility of the three organic, grass-fed ice cream shops Blue Marble runs in Brooklyn, all sugar, flavorings, and coffee will be locally sourced. Sweet Dreams will also, hopefully, be a start in invigorating the "local nascent dairy industry," where dairy cows are a part of common culture, "by deepening and diversifying the market for milk and milk-based products" in a country where ice cream is not yet part of the national culture. Who said you can't save the world with ice cream?

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By Zoe Schlanger in Food on May 28, 2010 3:26 PM

Comments [rss]

Donna Klaus

This post was very nicely written, and it also contains a lot of useful facts.

julieannclark

"Ridiculously warm country"? The author has clearly never been to Rwanda... but couldn't even be bothered to do a quick Google search, which would tell you that average daily temperatures range from 66-73°F.

Aimable

Rwanda is arguably one of the worst dictatorships in the world today. An extremist elite group from the minority Tutsi ethnic group uses force on a daily basis to enslave the remaining part of the population.

Recently, the New York Times reported how a university professor was sentenced to 5 years in jail for "insulting the president."

The main opposition candidate has been dragged to court and prevented from registering her party, simply because she argues that some soldiers in the current Rwandan army have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity and need to be tried.

Grenade attacks in the capital city Kigali against civilians are becoming more and more frequent.

Law Professor Peter Erlinder, an American lawyer who went to Rwanda to represent the opposition leader was arrested by the extremist Tutsis.

The next civil war in Rwanda is looking more and more inevitable as the extremist elite in power in Rwanda insists on pushing the rest of the population against the wall.

Good luck on investing in Rwanda! We will see if your business assets will still be there after the war.

Herve

Aimable Mugara

This is complete BS !!! You can't make eggs without breaking eggs. The situation is more stable than ever and the country is on a constructive path to sustainable development under Kagame. If that means a couple of people in jail ... so be it ...

Don't trust my word for it :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/28/rwanada-kagame-defends-rights-record