Sustainable access to
Rwanda is currently facing a growing number of challenges that is pushing more and more of its rural population into poverty. The country’s development has slowed, unemployment has reached an all-time high and Rwanda is among the ten countries worst affected by food price inflation. With a rural poverty rate for farmers at 76%, many communities in Western Rwanda, the country’s poorest region, are finding themselves trapped in an increasingly robust cycle of poverty. Those most affected by this are the children who are finding themselves unable to continue their schooling as their families can no longer afford to send them to school. This alarming trend is further contributing to Rwanda’s high primary school dropout and low secondary school enrolment rates, 29% and 34% respectively.
We are not looking to implement a quick fix to get kids back to school only to see them back at home once our support ends. Instead, our focus is on building the financial resilience of families so they can independently provide for their children without relying on support from organisations like us. To achieve this, we have designed a context-specific programme that enables children to return to school while we work with their parents to create an additional source of agriculture-based revenue. Here is how it works:
We provide primary and secondary school children with a bursary which covers all of the hidden costs of accessing schooling and enables them to get medical attention if they get sick (students don't perform well at school if they are not well!)
During this time, we work with their parents to build an additional income stream by training and equipping them to grow and sell oyster mushrooms. This is a great source of income for the families, but it also introduces an affordable source of vegetable protein to local markets, combating malnutrition in the region.
Lastly, we encourage beneficiaries into saving groups which provides an all-important access to capital and encourages community collaboration. Members of each group will contribute a portion of their mushroom sales into a common pot each month, this builds up over time, members can then request to borrow funds for important projects such as buying a small piece of land, a cow, or repairing their house.
It is clear that there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to breaking the cycle of poverty, the barriers that are faced are complex and unique to each family. Our programme does not seek to tell these families what they need to do to improve their lives, instead it trusts them to know best and works with them as partners to give them the tools and capability to overcome the unique problems they face. The combination of an additional source of income, the community support and access to capital granted by the saving groups and the financial breathing room afforded by the school and health bursary, provides exactly this to families - a moment of respite and the opportunity to stop firefighting and instead make long term investments in their family’s future.
We use the Progress out of Poverty Index, a well-established set of indicators to measure levels of poverty. The chart shows the material difference for families from our most recent cohort of beneficiaries, comparing their situation before and after being part of the programme. As you can see, there is meaningful progress on each key indicator, meaning that families are demonstrably better off for having been on the programme! Less children are missing school, less people are missing health insurance, more families own their homes, have cemented floors, own kitchen gardens, own more livestock and are able to save substantially more.
