This publication is the third in a series of Catholic Relief Services Partnership Case Studies. The study demonstrates the vital role that CRS played in ensuring the continuation of critical safety net centers (SnC) in Rwanda under the Comprehensive Close out Strategy amendment (CoSa) project. Safety net centers strive to meet the myriad needs of Rwandas most vulnerable citizens: the terminally and chronically ill, disabled, elderly, orphans, street children, and the destitute. Centers range in type from those serving populations which will likely never return home, such as hospices and homes for the elderly, to those serving the temporarily needy, such as people displaced by natural disasters, orphans, and street children. What each of the centers has in common is increasing demand in the face of limited and dwindling resources. Food aid supplied from USAID Food for Peace through CRS not only serves to meet the nutritional requirements of the centers' residents but also allows the centers to spend their limited resources on needs other than food. Faced with an impending cessation of Title II food aid in Rwanda, CRS is implementing a three-year partnership project of strategic planning, income generation, and intensive capacity strengthening to prepare 39 SNCs to sustain their life-saving services when food support ends in 2009.

The Catholic Relief Services Partnership Case Studies series highlights the work of CRS and its partners, working in solidarity to increase local ownership, strengthen organizational capacity, and combat poverty, hunger, and injustice.