COMMEET
The story of Rwanda
My name is John Bosco Harerimana, the Commeet Fellow who is active on a daily basis in Kamonyi, Southern Province, Rwanda, improving lives through education, coffee farming and community microfinance. In my community activities I closely cooperate with Commeet Fellowship, which provides me with services, toolkits and network partners.
First of all, I am the Founder and Director of the Little Angels School, for children aged 3-9. We have a nursery section and a low primary section for more than 87 children coming from poorest families and middle classes. We help them to speak English, French and Swahili.
The Little Angels School is committed to transforming the lives of the children and local families by combining quality education with sustainable economic development. Our vision is to create a strong and self reliant community, where every child has access to education and every family has opportunities to improve their livelihoods.
The Little Angels School provides children not only with quality learning opportunities, but also with moral values and practical life skills. It reduces school dropout rates, supports vulnerable children and develops future leaders. It increases literacy and academic performance, ensuring better employment opportunities in the future. Finally, It reduces poverty through education, which indirectly strengthens families and communities.
My second activity is empowering communities through coffee plantations.
My prime objective is to improve food security, reduce poverty and hunger within families. My secondary aim is to create jobs that support families and increase welfare. I promote working for your own future and the future of your loved ones. I try to make people self-reliant and able to face their own challenges. I try to turn working capacity into problem-solving capacity.
The coffee activities range from helping local families find seeds to advising families about plantation management and maintenance. They also include manure sourcing and tools acquisition. Finally, actually harvesting the coffee beans and also marketing the produce are important money-earning activities.
My third activity is building local capacity through community microfinance.
My aims are many: to encourage a culture of saving and financial responsibility, to improve access to
small loans, to actually provide affordable loans for farming, livestock, retail and other small business, to support SME development and income-generating activities, and to strengthen community solidarity and economic resilience. I therefore also give classes in budgeting, saving, record keeping, management skills and making business plans, Even the Little Angels school, with its young pupils, promotes community savings and lending groups that enable families to support one another financially. Community microfinance has proven to be a powerful tool for empowering people: they get access to small loans, saving opportunities and financial education. All this helps families and small entrepreneurs improve their livelihoods, reduces poverty and builds sustainable economic growth.
COMMEET
The three activities reinforce each other but there are also challenges, so here is a call to action.
The coffee plantations provide money to families. Access to microfinance provides opportunities for business and education. And good education – including finance classes – creates good job opportunities. As families become economically stronger, the schools and wider community also become heathier and more sustainable, leading to self-empowerment.
So much for the theory, but life in practice may be tougher. Disappointing harvests, lower prices for produce, higher costs of living, expensive acquisition of seeds and tools, lack of money to maintain housing well, etc. etc. do cause anxiety and real financial trouble. Sometimes the residents are just not able to save enough themselves to fund everything they need. This means that donations to the community microfinance fund are greatly appreciated and in fact necessary. If you are interested in this Commeet work of mine, please get into a conversation with me:
John Bosco Harerimana, COMMEET Fellow
Kigali, Rwanda
john bosco harerimana | LinkedIn
hjohnbosco@yahoo.fr
I really look forward to talking to you. And if you like what you hear, please feel free to make a donation here already towards our valuable work.
