Major League Baseball

Yanks help women who survived Rwandan Genocide

Published Jun. 3, 2010 12:57 a.m. ET

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Women who survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide are getting a helping hand from the New York Yankees.

Assistant general manager Jean Afterman and Mindy Franklin Levine, wife of Yankees president Randy Levine, have joined with Same Sky, a fair-trade company that helps lift women out of poverty by giving them the tools to become self-sufficient entrepreneurs.

Same Sky's first project is with female artisans from Rwanda who are HIV positive. Through Same Sky's trade-not-aid initiative, the women crocheted bracelets out of hand-blown glass beads. The bracelets are for sale.

The Yankees held an event attended by Agnes Gasana, wife of Rwanda's U.N. Ambassador Eugene-Richard Gasana, honoring the women during New York's game against the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday.

In just several month during 1994, 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered in an ethnic war.

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