ETO Gitarama Project: Make a Difference (MAD) 

Project ER : Education Rwanda

In the summers of 2004,2005 & 2006, a group of youth and adults traveled to Gatenga,Rwanda in Africa on a service project that involved working directly with several villages to primarily address three main issues:

• The training of teachers in the development of moral/educational programs for children, teaching them about unity and peace and how to work with children to apply these and other virtues in their daily lives.
• Working with village elders in the development of agricultural co-ops to assist in the production of food for purposes of more adequately feeding their families and also for providing a means for making a living.
• Teaching mothers and a few interested fathers about health and nutrition and how to provide inexpensive balanced meals for their families and steps to take to prevent disease.

In one village where the group was stationed there is an elementary school with over 800 students. Each small classroom is crowded to overflowing with at least 60 children.

This school is very poor and lacking everything thatwe, in this society consider essential and required as our basic right for the promotion of learning. For example, the school lacks enough desks so there is not enough room for all the children to sit down.  Many have to stand up throughout their classes. We are in the process of raising funds for this school and the first priority request from the director of the school is for student  desks.  

Other financial needs include the building of latrines. Currently the school’s latrines are inadequate - only four latrines for the use of 863 students!

Other needs include pens for writing. Many students lack pens and must wait to borrow a friend’s pen after the friend has finished using it.

Books are another need.The school has no library books or room for housing them. 

Many children come from poor families and do not eat all day. The director would like to be able to eventually establish a lunch program. Some help for this latter project might come from the UN World Food Program, but there would still be a need for salaries for cooks to prepare the meal.

As you can see there are many needs. We hope that you will be able to help improve the learning and living environments for these children. Our first project is buying desks. The school uses bench style desks where three children sit on each bench. The principal of the school tells us that they will need 105 more benches to replace those that are old and to add those that are lacking. Each bench costs about $40 Canadian to buy. Cost for all desks would be over $4,000! That is an ambitious goal but we are hopeful. For more information, please contact:

Step One Services Society (SOS)
Phone: 250-478-6369
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