Gender Equality Rwanda Project #53361

Support 30 girls to break the cycle of violence

by Paper Crown Rwanda

Project Report | Dec 20, 2022
Closing out 2022 and Starting a New Initiative!

By Clementine Nyirarukundo | Programs & Partnership Manager and Acting Director

Beneficiary and testimonial

Dear friends of Paper Crown Rwanda,

It’s Clementine, PCR’s Programs & Partnership Manager and Acting Director. Our biggest projects are wrapping up as 2022 comes to an end! We have had huge success with our most recent My Voice, My Power Project where the participants gained critical knowledge around gender and sexual and reproductive health and rights, built their leadership, confidence, and self-esteem skills, and formed their own advocacy clubs and held an event to increase awareness of GBV and promote gender equality. Additionally, we just hosted an incredible event in support of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign where we focused on how using an intersectional approach in gender programming can help increase the rights for girls and women with disabilities. Guests had the opportunity to learn about the intersections of gender, disability, age, class, etc., dissect their own internal biases towards people with disabilities, and hear what disability equity looks like in the Rwandan context.

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Closing out our Girls Level Up project!

Your support has gone such a long way to ensuring that we were able to run successful and meaningful projects that sustainably work towards achieving gender equality in Rwanda. Specifically, since opening this project, we have been able to run three rounds of My Voice, My Power, impacting 150 adolescents directly, and thousands of community members, parents, and teachers through events and educational sessions.

Our passionate team of community educators work hard on the ground to transform gender norms, and we have realized that one of our biggest needs is to keep growing and building qualified educators so that we can scale up our work. This is why we have decided to put Girls Level Up on hold, and open a new project that supports adolescent girls and women to become community gender educators. This project will directly fund 5 women to join the PCR team as champions of change and help us scale our transformative gender work across Rwanda.

Visit this link to continue to support Paper Crown Rwanda through our latest initiative!

Without your help, we would not be able to do the work that we do, so thank you. I am looking forward to checking in with you soon, as we move into the new year with programming that continues to fight against GBV.

Thanks again and talk soon!

- Clementine

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Links:

PCR's Instagram

PCR's November Newsletter

Links:

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Sep 6, 2022
Gender, Disability, and SRHR

By Clementine Nyirarukundo | Programs & Partnership Manager and Acting Director

PCR Event: Gender, Disability and SRHR

Dear friends of Paper Crown Rwanda,

It’s Clementine, PCR’s Programs & Partnership Manager and Acting Director. It’s great to be writing to you again and updating you on all that we have done over the last few months! Recently, we have been focusing our attention on the disability community in Rwanda, as they are often left out of mainstream conversations and efforts towards achieving equality. In June and August, we hosted disability events focusing on gender transformative thinking, combating GBV, and addressing the gaps in awareness and information around Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) with young girls with disabilities. We were also able to use our social media channels and newsletters to increase awareness and educate our followers on the myths and hardships that young girls with disabilities experience when it comes to accessing SRHR services and information.

Additionally, we completed another round of our flagship My Voice, My Power project, and have started a new one! Throughout this project, we work with Rwandan boys and girls living in rural communities on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), SRHR, child and human rights, gender norms, leadership, and more.

"People often think that a man's voice is the only one that matters - that they're the ones that should make the final decision and the only ones that can be a president, mayor, or doctor. But we've learned that everyone has the same rights, and that women are also capable of being in those positions of leadership." Diane, age 14, My Voice, My Power Participant.

This month on our social media platforms, we’re covering information and awareness around feminism. A recent study came out that discovered that young people are increasingly moving away from identifying as feminists, and we want to deconstruct narratives that misconstrue what feminism is really all about to continue our fight towards gender equality.

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Thanks to your kind donations towards the Girls Level Up (GLU) project, we have been able to build our teams capacity so that we can sustainably work towards achieving gender equality in Rwanda. As you may know, grassroots, nonprofit organizations cannot function without its amazing and dedicated staff, who often go above and beyond to make sure that impact is happening on the ground. Through this funding, we have been able to support the team, in addition to our gender trainer, Alice, and two new gender trainers, Frida and Rahamat! These amazing young women are dedicated to gender transformative work and ending GBV, and we are so grateful to have them as a part of our team! With the addition of these trainers we will be able expand programming and impact more adolescents!

"Gender norms shouldn't be a barrier to young girls working towards achieving their dreams, that's why I joined Paper Crown Rwanda, to be a part of this life changing journey to empower girls." Rahamat Umuhoza, Paper Crown Rwanda Gender Trainer and Project Manager

We would not be able to continue to do the work we do to transform harmful gender norms and put an end to GBV without your support, so thank you. I am looking forward to our next update as we move into 16 days of activism in November, continue educating on the ground, and start to plan for our next campaign to keep this work going!

Thanks again and talk soon!

- Clementine

Links:

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May 10, 2022
Accountability on the road to gender equality

By Clementine Nyirarukundo | Programs & Partnerships Manager; Acting Director

My Voice, My Power 2022

Dear friends of Paper Crown Rwanda,

Clementine here, PCR’s Programs & Partnership Manager and Acting Director. I cannot believe how fast this year is flying by! It seems like just last week that I was writing our end-of-2021 report back in January. The last few months have been busy for us but very fulfilling, so business as usual! We’re implementing our current cycle of our flagship My Voice, My Power (MVMP) project, where where we educate adolescent girls and boys living in rural areas of Rwanda on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), child and human rights, and gender norms, and more.

“This workshop showed me how girls are often abused and mistreated, and this touched my heart as a personal impact to me, it made me look for what I can do to stop that. I also made the decision of not becoming that kind of man who abuses women." - adolescent boy in urban Rwanda, aged 14-18, participant in PCR project.

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We’ve also been sharing a lot of great, informative content on our social media channels and in our newsletter. We talked in-depth about gender transformative approaches (GTA) and why they’re vital in our field of work, we celebrated International Women’s Day in March and shared inspiring stories of Rwandan women breaking biases, and we called for an end to (online) sexual assault and encouraging safe online spaces.

This month, we’re covering all things accountability: what it is, who PCR is accountable to, and other interesting topics like genderwashing. We’ve been talking about some recent news in Rwanda and how that ties into community accountability. Learn more in our most recent monthly newsletter and our social media channels (linked below)!

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We also have some updates on the progress with the Girls Level Up (GLU) project we’ve been fundraising for, and how we’ve started using your extremely generous donations to help pave the road toward gender equality in Rwanda.

A portion of the donated funds on GlobalGiving went toward expanding the PCR team, meaning we are able to expand our programming and impact. Our new trainer is Alice, and she’s doing an amazing job already supporting our MVMP project. This is what she's said of her time with us so far:

“Working with PCR has been eye opening for me. Through my participation and engagement with young people in the My Voice, My Power project, I have been able to learn even more about gender, gender-based violence (GBV), methodologies of breaking gender bias, challenging harmful gender norms, and bringing change in the community in a gender transformative approach. Furthermore, I have been able to be part of the team which uses participatory approaches and this has improved my critical thinking and training skills.” - Alice, PCR Gender Trainer
Another portion of the funds has gone toward what we in the gender-development field call “operational costs” which includes everything from supporting our staff with fair wages and to simply keeping a roof over our heads. This is especially important since many grants and funds don’t cover these types of requirements, so we’re extremely grateful for your support.

We are truly amazed by the amount of supporters who have donated to our organization. We believe so much in the work that we do, and we are honored that you do too! We promise to keep you updated on our journey to ending harmful gender norms. Thank you all,

- Clementine

My Voice, My Power 2022

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