Rwanda
The Friends of St. Francis Youth Life Skills project is a capacity-building development project situated in the remote village of Muganza in Southern Province, Rwanda. The project has been designed to assist young disabled people in the village and surrounding communities to reach autonomy and be able to become active members of Rwandan society through the provision of educational/vocational training and medical services.
The youth training workshop provided by the project will equip participants with skills in sewing, cooking, cobbling and other practical work skills according to the kind of handicap they have. This will also reduce poverty for families as their children with disabilities will have the ability of doing some productive work.
In addition, a sustainable farm will be developed to help provide supplies and income for the centre and local community. It is the projects goal to create a self-sustaining community in Muganza.
Accommodation will be available to cater for children and their carers who come in from outlying villages to attend the local health clinic or hospital. At present, there is nowhere for them to stay. The new centre will also provide on-going rehabilitation for disabled children or others recovering from injury or surgery.
Village of Hope (VOH) in Gasabo, Rwanda is a multifaceted community development project based upon poverty reduction initiatives with the goal of achieving sustainable development, and develops social vitality to a society devastated by poverty and ethnic conflict.
VOH is a self-sustaining, holistic model assisting and training Rwandans to build sustainable homes that will last the test of time. Under the guidance and mentoring of expert international tradesmen, Rwandans working on the VOH are developing skills that will give them much needed experience for gaining further employment. Furthermore, these skills are transferrable to the maintenance of community infrastructure, thus building local development capacity.
By employing locals from the Gasabo community, the VOH is helping to provide much needed employment opportunities and at the same time provide hope for the widows and orphans in the village. The widows are trained to maintain the homes, and farm the surrounding land to provide income. These families also receive grief counselling, income generation project training and participate in community-building activities.
The longer term objectives of this project include:
• To improve the education system in the community and provide vocational training for the unemployed.
• To improve access to healthcare and the quality of nutrition.
• To train locals to build/maintain their own properties and community infrastructure.
• To sustainably develop agricultural programs at community the level.
Revival Palace is a community development project located in Gisozi, Kigali Rwanda. The project aims to empower locals to be a resource to their local community in the areas of education, counselling and small business.
Through its Child Sponsorship and school program, the educational opportunities for impoverished children in the immediate community are improved. Additionally, annual interactive teacher training conferences are provided to all teachers from schools within Kigali – providing specialist training on child-focused learning strategies, age specific lesson plan development, student discipline and class control, and further English teacher training.
Revival Palace offers both counselling support and counselling training for community leaders, whose communities were affected by the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, in the areas of depression, trauma, sexual abuse, grief and loss.
To ensure sustainability, Revival Palace also recognises that the development of small business will empower and grow the community. A skills training centre, with courses ranging from sewing to cabinet making, provides needy parents employment opportunities and skills to develop further employment. This enables them to pay for their children’s education, eventually allowing them to reach self-sustainability.
Through these various development activities, the Revival Palace project will sustainably benefit local communities both immediately and into the future.
Hope Education is a development project aimed at improving Rwanda’s education systems through the provision of on-going teacher training and mentoring. Hope Education works closely with the Rwandan Government in its strategic development plans for poverty reduction through the restructuring of the education system into the English language and on the role education can play in assisting the country to overcome the traumas of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.
As of 2009, the Rwandan government has sort to overhaul its education system away from the French language to English to improve the economic prospects of the nation and its people with its East Africa neighbours. Hope Education continues to take a leading role in helping the country to achieve this major development goal.
In 2009 the project helped to train around 1,000 government teachers from all over Rwanda in various stages of a 3-year 'Train the Trainer' pathway for English and student-centred teaching pedagogy. Since 2010, the project has been providing training for tertiary education providers and middle management in the Rwandan Ministry of Education.
Hope Rwanda believes education provides the foundation for economic growth and self development – as per the United Nations Millennium Goal for Universal Education (MDG 2). It brings additional benefits in health, governance, gender equality, stability and security.
