Helping Rwandan Children out of Poverty

For the past three months, we have been working on our strategy for projects in Bugarama for the next three years. We are making an ambitious bid for funding from Jersey Overseas Aid who have been very generous in their support and encouragement for us to extend our horizons and to focus on the impact of what we want to achieve through our partnership with local schools there.

Our overall aim is to improve access for all to good quality educational opportunities. Our three primary objectives are to improve teaching and learning conditions, increase access to secondary, tertiary, and vocational training opportunities and improve the quality of teaching.

We are using the recommendations of the Impact Assessment study carried out last year as a guide and we have engaged David Musendo of Lifetime Consulting, who led that study, to help us establish a baseline study so that we can measure the outcomes of our projects at the end of the three years.

To this end, Dennis and I are traveling back to Bugarama at the end of April to participate in a workshop with our local partners to ensure their commitment to our strategic priorities.

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We believe that there are some exciting new initiatives in our strategy. Jersey Overseas Aid has recruited 10 volunteer teachers from Jersey who will spend time in Bugarama in August with teachers helping to improve English and share teaching techniques. This will be backed up by the Jersey Education Department which will establish an online training hub for local teachers. We’ll have news of these developments in our next report.

Another key area of our strategy will be to extend girls’ hygiene facilities to all local schools including a dedicated room with a bed, shower, toilet, sanitary products, and educational materials, with the aim of avoiding girls missing school during their periods.

All schools in Rwanda are now obliged to provide students with a cooked lunch. Our partner schools are developing agricultural initiatives to supplement the lunches. Two of the teachers from Muko School, Michel and Polyphile, have gained places for a 10-week course at Harper Adams Agricultural College in the UK to study the best farming methods.

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For the past couple of years, local teachers have helped us in our fundraising by running the Virtual London Marathon and this year is no different. Joel will be running for the second time with friends and Dennis and I are looking forward to being there this year to cheer him on. All donations to sponsor him will be welcome!