Support 30 girls to break the cycle of violence

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:

• Instagram page
• Website
• PCR August Newsletter