Our project partner in Rwanda, rYico, is a small NGO with the long term vision to give vulnerable children in Rwanda the opportunity to start a new life and seek a better future, based on community involvement, education and training.
They established a youth centre in Rwanda called Centre Marembo in 2005, which provides accommodation, support and education for 30 or so ex-street children and young people who are orphaned, neglected or left in very difficult conditions particularly as a result of the 1994 genocide. The centre provides vocational and life skills training to young people and a drop in center for hunreds of children living and working on the streets each week.
A Unicef recent study showed that there are an estimated 6000 street based children living in kigali. This number is partly due to there being a large number of orphans and child headed households as a result of the killings during the 1994 genocide in which 1 million people mainly adults were killed. A growing number also continues to rise as a growing number of families are struggling to provide for the basic needs of their children. The centre has a strong reputation in the city and is well known to many young people.
Marembo Journal
Bottletop supports rYico to deliver their most popular program, the youth newspaper entitled The Marembo Journal.
This project has been a great success and is having a very positive impact on the different districts of Kigali. The journal is written by young people from the ages of 15-25 years of age. The young people not only design and write it, but they distribute it as well. They know exactly where to distribute it so it has the maximum impact.
During the sessions at Marembo Centre their are 7seven clubs that run:
- HIV/AIDS awareness
- Gender issues
- Environmental protection
- Anti-Genocide
- Sports club
- Music club
- Youth and Children's rights
The young people have regular debates and each debate is run by the young people from each group to ensure that themes and topics within the different groups are covered. These debates then form the basis of the articles that are then used for the journal. It is this format that ensures that the magazine is addressing issues that are directly affecting the youth. The magazine always has information on the Marembo Centre, sexual health and HIV/AIDS awareness. The young people produce 500 copies of the journal once every two months but they would love the opportunity to distribute more as the need is great and they feel that they are only tapping the surface of need. The journal is a fantastic vehicle of information and is raising awareness on many issues and on many levels.
Extract from Bottletop Report, August 2009
"I filmed and listened to one of the debate groups that was determining issues to be placed in the next issue. There were over 50 youth present and they were a very lively group. They began the session singing and clapping and cheered at the end to
mark the beginning of the session. It was a great start and a great atmosphere and really got the young people fired up ready for the debate: Condom use and who is responsible for carrying them
.
This resulted in a very lively discussion, which led into Gender inequalities. Within the African culture it is the men who is said to have the responsibility for buying and carrying the condoms. The youth were asked to challenge this and debate whether a woman could take responsibility too. One young woman said that since she has come to the centre, she is more open with her boyfriend and they always use condoms compared to her friends who she knows are having unprotected sex.
I was very impressed with the openness of the group and how they spoke about the different issues and were clearly very passionate about how they felt. I know that you need to have built up a lot of trust within a group to achieve this and clearly Centre Marembo have achieved this."
Rosie Turner, Bottletop Monitor