Back to School

Children drop out of school for many reasons, but family poverty ranks high among them. AEE Rwanda’s programs take a holistic approach to ensuring that children’s right to education is realized.

Clementine

In 2022, when Clementine was 16, her family were struggling financially and decided that they could only afford to keep Clementine’s older sister in school. Clementine dropped out and spent the next two years at home helping her parents with casual laboring work. She also became pregnant and had a child. At that point she did not envisage returning to school, but early in 2024 teachers trained through an AEE Rwanda program visited Clementine to convince her to come back, telling her “that giving birth must not stop me from studying and reaching my dreams.” But still, economic barriers to returning to education are very real for poor families like Clementine’s.

Fabian

Fabian is the social and economic development officer for Bugoba Cell. His role includes improving the economic circumstances of the poorest families in his area. Fabian, and local government officers like him across Rwanda, are vital partners in AEE Rwanda’s programs. They work closely with AEE Rwanda in setting up self-help groups for the poorest families, protecting child rights, and resolving conflict in families. Through the self-help and savings groups, families like Clementine’s are supported to save in their groups, and with small loans, to engage in micro-enterprise activities, increase their incomes, and afford to keep their children at school.

Now back at school Clementine is particularly enjoying English, Kinyarwanda, and biology. She says, “I felt that coming back to school was the right thing to do. Before, I had no vision for my future, but now I have a vision, because when I pass in school it will make me a great person in the future.”

Bola

Bola is a teacher at Clementine’s school, trained as a mentor under the AEE Rwanda program with special responsibility for students with disabilities, ensuring that education is accessible for them and getting those who have dropped out back to school. When starting to work with a child with disabilities, Bola says, “the first thing I do is tell them about their rights. They have a right to education, a right to be treated at hospital, and a right to socialize with the other children.”

Gad is one of the students Bola works with. He is functionally deaf, the result of an illness when he was a baby. “The students used to bully me about it,” he recalls, “and it made me unhappy, and because of that I used to fail in school. I somehow felt that school was not important to me. Also, I come from a poor family.” His father left the family when he was a child, and his mother has a physical disability.

Gad

Gadf left school in 2022 at the end of Senior 2, saying that the decision made sense to him.

He could then find work in local mining operations and in construction and help support his mother.

Bola went to Gad’s home and explained that he had a right to an education and a right to be treated fairly at school. She also worked with the school Imboni, specially selected student representatives, to change the students’ mindsets, “First, we told the students that children with disabilities are also children like them. Secondly, that children with disabilities need assistance from their fellow children. They never chose to be born with disabilities, if you been born with disabilities, what would you want? So, if you were lucky enough not to have a disability, try to help your fellow children because they did not choose to be born with a disability.” Changing takes time, but Bola says that the change is there and is working for students like Gad.

Tackling the economic side, Gad’s mother is in a self-help and savings group, ensuring that Gad can complete his education.