By Midi Berry | Senior Development Consultant, Freeplay Foundation
Eleven years ago, over 800,000 people were killed in 100 days of genocide in Rwanda. One of the most devastating and enduring consequences of the conflict is that almost a million orphans were left to fend for themselves.
The tragedy of l994 is compounded by Aids and other diseases that daily leave more children without parents. An estimated 65,000 children, usually girls and some as young as eight or nine years old, are heads of households. They care for younger siblings, often in conditions of great poverty and isolation, eking out a living by subsistence farming or doing odd jobs for neighbors who may exploit them. These children are typically unable to go to school or acquire basic life skills and information that they would normally have received from parents and community leaders.
Since 2000, the Freeplay Foundation has worked actively in Rwanda with a variety of NGO partners including UNICEF and VOA in our longest running country program to provide sustained access to vital radio information and education for child-headed households.
Children receive information about practical issues like health care, clean water, improved farming methods, animal husbandry, food security and children’s rights. The radio reduces their sense of isolation and helps them to feel safe at night.
Over a five-year period, nearly 10,000 Freeplay self-powered radios have been distributed, the vast majority among child-headed households and to children’s listening groups. During 2005, Global Giving donations have enabled the Freeplay Foundation to commit an additional 90 radios to its other funded distributions among child-headed households in Rwanda.
CARE Rwanda has been our valued primary radio distribution partner since September 2004, when they became the local implementing partner for our biggest single radio distribution and training initiative, sponsored at that time by a Canadian foundation. In addition to distributing and training radio ‘guardians’, CARE acts as an invaluable central point for all Freeplay Foundation radio shipments to Rwanda, handling customs clearance and ensuring other smaller partner organizations can receive their radios. We are extremely grateful to them for providing this service.
In 2006, as well as continuing our provision of Freeplay self-powered radios to CARE-identified orphans, we plan to engage together with CARE Rwanda in stimulating micro-enterprise development activity. A new Freeplay portable power source offers the hope of much-needed income generation opportunities for some of our older radio beneficiaries.
During 2005 our radio program partner Health Unlimited, the organization that produces the very popular Uranana (meaning ‘hand in hand’) program, has expanded its reach. Uranana is written and produced in Kigali and takes the form of a daily ten-minute radio drama, followed by a five-minute agony-aunt slot (Umahoza), which highlights drama issues of direct relevance to orphans, girls and young women heads of household.
In July of this year, 40 Freeplay Lifeline radios were provided to Health Unlimited, enabling them to extend the reach of their program via their Well Women Media Project into rural areas. In September distributions were made to an audience focus group and families identified by local authorities in Gitarama province. Distributions to an audience group and families in Gisenyl province have been carried out during the week of writing this report (19-23 December). These new audience groups will give listener feedback that informs health policy as well as contributing to the ongoing development and relevance of the Uranana storylines.
In October 2005, the Freeplay Foundation’s executive director made a five-year project liaison and monitoring visit to Rwanda. She reviewed a number of new and existing projects, including a visit to orphans to whom radios were given several years ago. Each visit revealed the importance of self-powered radio in the lives of Rwanda’s vulnerable children and youth.
Kristine Pearson’s report on Johnta, now fourteen, whose father died of Aids in 2000 and his mother in 2002/3, and who heads a household of five, is included separately on the Global Giving project report and photos sites for our Rwanda Radio Project for Orphans. Please visit these links for a story that will touch your heart. It demonstrates the kind of living conditions that many Global Giving radio beneficiaries have to endure and why your donations are so vital.
In 2006 and beyond, the work of the Freeplay Foundation will expand greatly in scale and range in Rwanda. Support to orphans and child-headed households figures centrally in the Foundation’s plans. Our goal is to ensure that a self-powered radio can be made available to every child-headed household in the land.
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