Helping Rwandan Children out of Poverty

In November 2019 a team of seven volunteers from Jersey, one from Bristol and four from Rwanda working at schools in Bugarama, South West Province.

With the generous support of Jersey Overseas Aid, we achieved the following:

• Work was started on a conversion of a six-classroom block at Muko School into twelve classrooms by building a second storey on top of existing classrooms. This project will be completed in March 2020. It’s a challenging piece of work involving strengthening foundations and supporting columns and is being supervised by Djuma, our local project manager. These classrooms will be used to expand senior secondary school opportunities and enable more local young people to access university courses;
• A new kitchen was built for Kibangira School and six classrooms painted. This completes a massive transformation of this school over the past three years, including six new classrooms, toilet block, teachers’ room and renovated classrooms;
• A block of three run down classrooms at Ryankana Primary School were renovated with new doors, windows, plastering and concrete floor. Another three classrooms will be renovated at our next visit later this year.

Our plans for ongoing development in the schools continue later this year. The schools are under huge pressures with numbers as they cope with rising numbers but also government plans to improve and broaden the scope of education opportunities for all.

Jersey Overseas Aid have approved a grant of £41,000 for a new classroom block at Ryankana. This will be Phase 1 of a new two-storey building, including six classrooms and toilets. But we have to find another £41,000 to match this sum so we have our work cut out for us this year. Any assistance will be very gratefully received.

In two weeks’ time, our team of volunteers will be setting out for a month’s visit to Rwanda. Already preparatory work has started on the foundations for the new kitchen at Kibangira and next week work will begin on plastering walls, erecting doors and windows and laying a new floor three classrooms at Ryankana School, ready for our arrival there. We will be painting the classrooms here and in other schools working with a local team, helping to improve teaching and learning conditions.

This is a time of great expansion for schools in Rwanda. The government has established basic nine years of education for all and is now focused on bringing down class sizes – which can be 80/90 children in a class – and phasing out the double-shift system in primary schools whereby younger pupils only receive half a day’s teaching and make way at midday for others to come in for their turn.

There is a desperate need for additional classrooms, and with our three-year construction plans and generous funding from Jersey Overseas Aid, we are doing our bit to assist with this programme. Our main construction project this year, which will add six new classrooms on top of existing classrooms at Muko School, is underway after months of planning. The tender document has been advertised and one of our tasks when we get there will be to sit down with the local management committee and select the best building company for the job.

At the same time, we see the need to improve what is already there. The classrooms we are renovating are some of the original buildings at Ryankana and their current state is dark and dingy. The new windows and doors will transform the rooms, bringing in new light.

Our volunteers have worked hard over the past few months to raise money in Jersey and Bristol for pay for this renovation work – and Jersey Overseas Aid has matched our total up to £10,000.

We have been visiting Bugarama now for ten years and seen tremendous development and improvement in all the schools. It’s exciting to be part of this and to return to meet old friends. In our next post, we will tell you how we get on there.

Links:

• Jersey branch website