Teach 30 Rwandan Women to Read, Write & Calculate

Dear sir/ Madam,

Thank you for your great support for helping women from our community to study how to read, write and calculate.

We are very happy to inform you that on July 26, 2013 we will close our second term academic year 2013   

The following activities are we had planned to work on during this second term:

• Teaching students how to construct a sentence.
• Teaching women’s rights.
• Teaching business skills
• Buying teaching materials.

So far, the women have learnt to read all the alphabets. Now they can read sentences and write letters by themselves.

Two students have already opened their own bank accounts which will help them to save money, feed their families and run their small projects.

These women are joining different self-reliant groups which help them to develop their families and learn from others.

In our class 3 women had already registered to the local government for legal marriage. This is an amazing achievement that is beneficial as it gives a woman full rights to access her family’s property.

One part of our operating cost is covered by the raised money from GlobalGiving donations as well as different fundraising activities including the performance of the dance troop.

The following are the challenges that we have:

• We are still unable to regularly pay the teachers' salaries.
• We are still having shortfalls in our monthly operating costs such as buying chalks, books, etc
• We are still renting some of the costumes of the dancing troop that helps us in fund raising.

Our plan for the next term:

• Teaching the women about their rights.
• Encouraging the women to send their daughters to school, open their own bank account in order to be able to save money for their families.
• To train them so that they can have self esteem and participate in the decision making committees in the community.
• To encourage them to have legal marriage, so that a child and the mother can have right to access the family property.
• Teaching them about different topics for personal development, and teach them business skills which will help them to raise income in their families.
• Mobilize the women to join cooperatives which will help them to combine their efforts with others and have sustainable development.
• Encourage the young students in our program to join public school, so that they can be able to continue their studies up to secondary school as soon as they graduate from our program.

In your opinion what do you think is the best approach to having a society that respects women’s rights? What else do you think we can include in next year our program of teaching women reading, writing and calculating for 2014 intake?

It is always promising to see how the life of our graduates improves day by day. Thank you once again for your partnership, and it will always be our pleasure to share with you our progress. Any support from you is warmly welcome. Please remember to visit our project and show it to your friends. We wish to stay in touch with you.

Thank you very much!

Gratefully,

Links:

• Search for us under the name "Let us Build Ourselves"/ Twiyubake

Dear sir/ Madam,

Thank you for your great support for helping women from our community to learn reading, writing, and calculating.

We are very grateful that due to your donations we were able to reach all the goals that we shared with you in our previous report.

We are very happy to inform you that on February 4, 2013 we have started our new academic year with 20 adult women from our community.

The women are completing their first term program this April. This year’s students are amazingly unique and impressive. In the first term the majority of our students are able to read and write all alphabets from A up to Z. They understand well how to exercise their rights. They have started practicing in class how to speak, discuss, and debate on different topics which prepare them for being able to stand in public and claim their rights. The most impressing thing is that all students attend every day on time from Monday to Friday. They motivated and very interested in learning, for preparing their future. They want to learn business skills so that they can know how to come up with innovative income generating activities.

Some women from our program have been giving testimonials about their expectations about our program in their lives. Mukankuranga Jeannette said:" I decided to join this literacy program, because I appreciate the impact of this project in the lives of my neighbors from this class. Usually I never direct myself as I could not read a road post. Apart from that I use to ask my neighbor to read for me letters I receive from my friends. I fear to participate in local meetings. I use to give more than required balance to my customers in my selling cassava flour business which makes me always have shortfalls. My neighbor from this program does all these things without any problem. I wish at the end of this program I will be able to do all that things by my own and have no problem concerning with illiteracy".

The following are the challenges that we have:

• Although there is a difference from last year, we are still unable to regularly pay the teachers' salaries.
• We are still having shortfalls in our monthly operating costs such as buying chalks, books, etc
• We are still unable to get teaching materials including instructional materials for a better undestanding.

The following are the plan we have for the second term 2013:

• We are still renting the costumes of the dancing troop that helps us in fundraising.
• Teaching students how to make a sentence.
• Teaching women’s rights, and business skills.
• Buying teaching materials.
• Organizing different fundraising strategies.

We can't thank you enough for your consistent collaboration. We really appreciate it very much.

Don’t you think that a woman is the first person who can effectively do family management? What do you think can be added in our project program as innovation?

Thank you again for your support to our program!