Empowerment for indigenous People; Batwa in Rwanda

Dear Patrons, 

On behalf of the Rwandan youth Development and Voluntary organization, I would like to thank you for donating to our projects through GlobalGiving.  Your support helps ensure that we can continue helping our community!

Recently, we have introduced to you, Empowerment for indigenous People; Batwa in Rwanda project. This project aims to empower indigenous people in “Abatwa” through integrated social, health, economic, and technological interventions. We have done the project needs assessment and the results of this need assessment were used in the development of this project.  

In Livelihood issues we found the following key points: 

Generally, the unemployment rate in Rwanda increased to 23.8 % in November 2021

Batwa group had higher rates of temporary employment (35%) and other informal jobs (38.3%) but low rates of full-time employment (0%), as well as farming (26.7%), compared to the non-Batwa

68.3% of the Batwa group belonged to category 1 in Rwanda, which is composed of families who cannot afford basic needs

For health issues we found the following key points: 

Batwa Group consistently faces poorer health, including mental health outcomes, exacerbated by the stigma and discrimination they face.

a lack of appropriate information on public health and impractical official hygiene requirements ill-suited to the local context.

Education issues  we found the following key points: 

98% of children are enrolled in primary school

only 71 percent of children complete their primary education

The Abatwa's educational level remains the lowest and the dropout rate the highest in Rwanda. According to the survey conducted by COPORWA, only 34% of Batwa had attended school, less than 1% secondary school and no one had completed higher education.

During our fieldwork, we found one family, composed of five members including parents, who live in a single-room house, which is a common problem here in the indigenous community but what makes our organization worry much about this family is the living conditions and the house which extremely very old tins with many holes. Whenever it is raining during the night they can not sleep and they have under five two children.  We would like to do a modification of this house in the first two weeks of September 2022, and to do this we need immediate funds of 3000 USD.  The photo of the photos is attached hereto to this report. 

We request you to donate generously to our project so that we can keep working and achieve our goals. You could also consider doing a monthly recurring donation for our project, which will help us with our ongoing work.  The link for the monthly recurring donation is mentioned below in the report.

We thank you for everything that you have done for our project, and we look forward to your continued support.

Thanks and Best Regards.

Jean Damascene UWIZEYIMANA

RWAYDAVO President