Rwanda is often called The Land of a Thousand Hills, and for good reason. No matter where you are in the evening, a valley of endless lights is present before you. “Kigali by night,” the locals tell me over and over. It is mesmerizing. As my trip comes to an end, Rwandans have asked me how I have liked their country. Truthfully, I respond that I have loved it, that it is a beautiful place filled with wonderful people.

Nursery school students in Kigali, Rwanda

While rapid change has taken place here over the last 18 years, there is still much to be done. There is a blanket of death covering this small country, as everyone here has somehow been affected by the genocide. Many are sole survivors of entire families, some are orphans who became head of households at a young age, there are those who were purposefully infected by HIV, and many who are psychologically disturbed by the utterly horrific events that occurred. Additionally, there continue to be many needless deaths due to lack of health infrastructure.

There are however, incredible projects being undertaken here that have seen record-breaking results. Partners in Health came to Rwanda in 2005, and the HIV rates have dropped from 17% to current day 3% of those tested. Efforts to reduce mother to child infection have been nearly 100% successful. The Access Project and many other smaller scale operations aim to create efficient and reliable health centers in all areas of the country. Family planning, education and nutrition have become priorities. Most importantly, a full circle approach has been taken to create sustainable results.

Sunflowers at Gardens for Health, Rwanda!

Rwanda is a rich country with such great potential. Amazing coffee, tea, fruits, and beautiful hand made crafts are all cultivated here. Some of the worlds last silverback gorillas inhabit Rwanda’s national parks. The people are warm, loving, loyal, intelligent, and hard working. I hope you all have a chance to visit The Land of a Thousand Hills to see for yourself!

Just $15 might seem like very little to us, but in many African countries it means the difference between a chance at an inspiring career and a life spent picking coffee beans. Here in Rwanda, as in most of Africa, secondary school (or high school) is not free. Bright and talented children growing up in rural areas, often living on less than $1 a day, are simply unable to afford to continue their education.

Chris Mburu is the poster child of what a difference just a ‘small gift’ can make. After passing through heavy security at the UN Rwanda headquarters, I found my way to his office where I was greeted with his huge smile and instant warmth. Growing up in rural Kenya, Chris was smart, but was often kicked out of school for not paying his fees. He didn’t wear a pair of shoes until he was 12 years old. Randomly, a Swedish woman chose Chris and began paying $15 per term for his school fees. She made sure he completed his secondary school. Chris is now a Harvard educated human rights lawyer and has been working for the UN for over 20 years.

An incredible man with an amazing story, you can watch Chris’ story in the documentary, “A Small Act.” He is living proof that just one small donation to a person somewhere in the world can truly change their life. Chris also feels strongly that SeeYourImpact’s model is the both effective and meaningful – donors cannot only change a life with very little, but they can also meet the life they changed.

Joslyn prepares to leave for school

On Sunday, we traveled to Gisenyi to pick up a Joslyn, a new student, from her home and take her to the Gashora Academy for the first time. Gisenyi is a town on the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which lies among daunting volcanoes and the beautiful shores of Lake Kivu. Despite the continued upheaval in the DRC, this Rwandan town is peaceful and thriving.

Here in Rwanda, educational opportunities are determined by a single national exam.  Each year 28,000 Rwandan students take the National Secondary Education Ordinary Level Test at the end of 9th grade. Admission to Secondary School is very competitive; fewer than 13,000 students can be admitted into the 734 secondary schools. The scores on this exam determine if a student can continue on to secondary school.

In the case the Gashora Girls’ Academy, phone calls are made to girls with high test scores and offered a spot in the school. They then have very little time to make a decision to leave their families behind and travel to Gashora, as often secondary school starts less than a week after they know their scores.

We arrived just in time to see Joslyn packing up the last of her belongings in her modest room. Unsure of the next time they would see her (Gashora is at least four hours away on the DRC/Burundi border) her family hovered as she prepared for the adventure.

Joslyn’s older sister even spoke English, and promptly asked if we could be Facebook friends and if I liked Chris Brown – the last thing I expected in rural Rwanda!  At 18, her sister was the oldest of six, and the newest family addition was barely 6 months old. While the mentality of having many children to run the family farm is slowly changing here, many families still have large numbers of children.

After Joslyn said goodbye to her family and friends we were off for the long drive to Gashora. All 90 new girls were arriving for the first time, and the small campus was bustling. The girls are some of the more intelligent young women in the country, and they all have huge dreams to be doctors, engineers, and political leaders. Rwanda Girls’ Initiative is making a difference in the entire country by giving young girls the hope and tools they need to be successful!

Jamie’s taking us along to Rwanda- get updates where you want them! Here on the blog, Facebook or Twitter

Today I went to visit Gardens for Health International (ghi.seeyourimpact.org). They focus on nutrition for families and helping improve the 45% rate of malnourishment for Rwandan children. GHI are located about 30 minutes outside of Kigali, and have an awesome office with views overlooking the city.

Mama Mugisha

I immediately got a great feel from them and the work they are doing. The grounds are bustling. Workers are tending to the crops and poking holes in plastic bottles for irrigation. Employees are busy on their computers. Rwandan women are cooking up a homegrown feast in the handmade pizza oven and outdoor kitchen. Local community members stop by for a snack and to say hello.

GHI is now completely focused on nutrition and helping improve the 45% rate of malnourishment for Rwandan children. They work with government run health centers that refer malnourished families. The results of their well-researched and clearly proven program are really amazing.

I even had the honor of meeting a SeeYourImpact superstar – our very own Mama Mugisha. Having been on our homepage for sometime now, Mama’s amazing photo is a well engrained visual in my mind. To see her walk up to the GHI office with one baby strapped to her back and the other in her arms was a surreal moment. We were unable to have any semblance of a conversation due to the language barrier, but Mama was extremely grateful to me – and to all of you – for what we have done for her. She sends her love back to Seattle.

Mama, myself, and about 30 other affiliates of GHI gathered for lunch outside in the shade. All three meals are cooked and served to the staff, workers, and community each day. This last November, they even prepared a delicious Thanksgiving feast for over 1,000 people! I thoroughly enjoyed my time visiting Gardens for Health, and hope we all do our part to ensure that they continue to have such an impact on the community.

Jamie’s taking us along to Rwanda- get updates where you want them! Here on the blog, Facebook or Twitter

Last night I stayed out at the school. The power was out almost the entire night. Pitch-blackness, malaria carrying mosquitos, and hot air is the norm for sleeping out here in the countryside by the lake. This morning the power was still not back on, leaving frustrated staff and students disconnected from the web.

Shooting hoops with the girls

Tuesday was a national holiday in Rwanda called Heroes Day during which the country celebrates the heroes of its past. The girls here at the school took turns speaking about their favorite heroes and they were even allowed to speak in Kinyarwandan instead of English.

This afternoon I had the honor of playing basketball with the team. I had such a good time. The girls worked hard and were very competitive, something I can certainly appreciate!  As a former college basketball player, I even got to teach them some new drills for practice, and these gals are some quick learners!

This evening we met with all the teachers in addition to Soozi and Shal. They are very dedicated to this project and have certainly persevered to make it happen. Well, off to do some more work and get to bed.

Jamie’s taking us along to Rwanda- get updates where you want them! Here on the blog, Facebook or Twitter

Yesterday morning we drove back out to Gashora from Kigali, and our car stalled about half way. We sat on the side of the road for 30 minutes, just enough time to gather quite a following of interested bystanders. We were picked up by a friend, and driven the rest of the way to the school. I continued on to the small town of Gashora to visit the Health Center and learn about The Access Project – a country-wide undertaking which aims to improve health infrastructure here in Rwanda.

The Gashora Health Center, through RwandaWorks and The Access Project, is a newly constructed building (2009) which serves the community. It consists of hospital care for men, women, and children, a maternity ward, preventative care, and HIV/AIDS testing and treatment. It treats about 150 patients a day and sees nearly 100 births every month. Since The Access Project started, there are close to zero home births as most women deliver at the Health Center. Women go through the birthing process without any family or friends present and without any painkillers. They are sent home after 72 hours of observation.

The Health Center also boasts a state of the art pharmaceutical technology, which helps to alert the pharmacy when drugs are close to their expiration date, when they have expired, and when their supply of a drug is running low. This helps save countless hours and ensure that the pharmacy is well stocked and efficient.

After the health center visit, I returned to the Girls’ Academy and had lunch with the staff. A typical fare of beans, rice, beets, onions and papaya was served. After lunch I spent more time observing the classrooms and taking pictures of the girls’. I also listened in on conversations about organic agriculture and how to best grow crops in the school garden.

After classes, around 2:30PM, the girls’ start their “jobs” and a frenzy of cleaning and organizing began. At 3:30, they headed to their clubs, which consist of French, dance, leadership, entrepreneurship, and debate. I was especially impressed with the singing and dancing, as well as the conversation during the leadership club. The girls were discussing issues of overpopulation and poor leadership and bringing up solutions to these problems in their own country and beyond. I am moved by their incredibly mature and well-informed perspectives of both Rwanda and the world beyond.

On my first day in Kigali, Rwanda started after a delicious local breakfast of fruit and an omelet, I met up with Soozi and Shal of the Rwanda Girls’ Initiative (rgi.seeyourimpact.org) to drive out to Gashora where their Girls’ Academy is located.

We arrived at the Gashora Girls’ Academy to find a beautiful school that is currently home to about 90 young Rwandan women (and 90 more starting next week!) who dream of going to college someday. Gashora, a small town in the Bugesera district of Rwanda, was chosen as the site of the school because it was one of the hardest hit areas of Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. Tutsi’s were rounded up and massacred across the countryside here, and it’s reconstruction and healing has been difficult.

An incredible classroom makes for excellent learning.

RGI has been a source of hope and rebirth, and is giving young women who excel in school amazing opportunities to dream of careers such as being a doctor, engineer, and entrepreneur.

We toured the agriculture projects at the school on site here, which are truly incredible. An irrigation system allows crops to grow even during the dry season thanks to the resource of a nearby lake. Larger than life papayas, zucchini, beets, cabbage, and countless other fruits and vegetables grow throughout the year. The school will soon acquire it’s own cows and chickens as well.

I was pleased to observe the girls working hard in class learning chemistry and physics. When spoke with them, they were interested in my career and where I was from. They wanted to know what I thought of African people. Pure curiosity, strong work ethic, and incredible hope was evident in my conversations with these young women.

After a lunch of rice, beans, pineapple and avocado at the school cafeteria, we watched the girls run their weekly meeting as a whole group and spoke of current events, sang the national anthem, and made announcements. The most touching part was during the teacher introductions, when the girls’ love for their teachers was evident through their loud cheering for each and every one.

The roads into Kigali reveal the daily grind for most locals. Heavy loads of bananas, pineapples, sticks, papayas, water and babies being carried kilometer after kilometer on the side of the road. Those lucky enough to have a bike must push the bike up the hill and hop on to cruise down. Women carry baskets on their heads and babies on their backs and little children run around playing in their bare feet.

Brilliant papayas near the school.

On the way back to Kigali we stopped at a Catholic church in Nyamata (the capital of Bugesera) which is now a memorial to the genocide. In 1992, during a wave of killings, hundreds of people hid in this church and were saved thanks to an Italian nun who called upon the government to spare their lives. In 1994, during the Hutu dominated genocide, 10,000 Tutsi crammed into and around this same church with the hopes of being saved in the same way. But this time there was no mercy to be had, and all 10,000 people were massacred with machetes, clubs, grenades, and machine guns. The church still holds the clothes of all who were killed as a symbol of their presence. It also has many of the remains in the form of a mass grave, which we entered to find skulls and bones stacked against the walls. Needless to say it was a powerful and emotionally draining experience.

We stopped for a drink at the U.S. Ambassador’s house in Kigali, and then went on to dinner at an amazing little restaurant called “Heaven.” The many hills in Rwanda make for beautiful views from almost anywhere. Tired from the trip and the long day, we headed to bed. More to come from Rwanda soon!

Kalimuddin ferrying children to school on his makeshift buggy

Eleven year old Kalimuddin’s family migrated to the city of Kanpur to escape griding poverty in their village in North East India. Though they were willing to work hard, ragpicking was the only job which his parents could find. The family lives in makeshift housing near the garbage dumping grounds, and spends their entire day sifting through the garbage to find things that can be re-cycled. Kalimuddin’s day begins at 5 am, when he is at the dumping ground going through the garbage to find anything that can be re-used, re-cycled or re-sold. At ten, Kalimuddin had never stepped into a school- there were no schools in his locality, and even if there were, he was too busy working to think of an education.

Kalimuddin was only mildly interested when Jagriti opened an informal education center in his community. What convinced him to enroll in the “Apna Skool” was the fact that the classes were being conducted in the afternoon after he ended his working day. He is now so passionate about going to school, that even after his family was forced to relocate to a different locality, he continues to cycle 4.5 miles to get to school, and even ferries other younger kids to school and back.

Arathi soaking up all the knowledge her 'teacher' can impart

Nine year old Arthi is enrolled in grade 5 in the local government school in her village of Amirthapuram in Tamil Nadu. Though she is a regular student, who wants to learn, a year back, she was struggling with her classes because of the poor quality of teaching in her school. She could barely read simple words, and struggled to subtract double digit numbers. Arthi is the name behind the statistics thrown up in an independent study conducted on the state of learning in India – “While 99.5% children between 6-10 years of age attend primary school in the state of Tamil Nadu, more than 50% of them cannot read a simple story or subtract 2-digit numbers.”

Arthi was one of the lucky ones. Her problem was spotted and she was enrolled in Pratham’s Read India Program. Today, not only has she mastered her numbers and letters, she helps other students learn the 247 syllables of the challenging Tamil-language alphabet.

Anuj with his mother outside the only home his family has ever known

Nine year old Anuj belongs to the Musahar (rat-eating) community, which has been officially notified as a “criminal community” by the Government. Though enrolled in a local school, he was discriminated against, and not allowed to attend classes with the ‘higher caste’ children. His widowed mother was contemplating pulling him, and this three siblings, out of school because she could not think beyond the squalid conditions in which the family had lived for centuries.

Anuj was lucky enough to be noticed by the Shoshit Seva Sangh, and offered free education in their residential school in Patna. Anuj is now doing extremely well in school, and dreams of studying engineering in one of the top institutions in the country.

In theory, the Government of India guarantees the ‘Right to Education’ to every child. In reality, millions of children like Kalimuddin, Arthi and Anuj manage to slip through the cracks for a host of reasons.

A Coaching Class in rural Uttar Pradesh

Drive through rural India, and the largest building in almost every village is the government primary school. Unfortunately, almost all these buildings are deserted, because few teachers, if any, choose to show up, and parents see no point in sending their children to schools where there are no teachers. In the evening, in the same villages, you find dozens of children crowded into tiny sheds which double up as private ‘coaching classes’. Parents who can afford to do so send their children to these classes, often conducted by the same teachers who are employed to teach in the government schools. The rest of the children drop out of the system.

Shouldn't they be in school?

Though it is illegal to do so, in both rural and urban schools, teachers discriminate on the basis of caste, creed, religion and gender. Students belonging to the lower castes are often forced to sit so far away from the teacher that they cannot hear what is being taught in class. Once these children drop out of school, it is almost impossible to get them back into the system.

The education system in India is stacked against girls. Many girls, especially in larger families, are often forced to drop out of school so they can tend to younger siblings while the mother goes out to work. Girls who escape that fate, are often forced to drop out of school after they attain puberty because most government schools lack proper sanitation facilities. Across the country, non-profits have found that the immediate effect of constructing toilet blocks is a drastic increase in female attendance, yet school buildings continue to be built without adequate facilities.

There is a large population of migrant laborers which spends six to nine months in the cities, and returns to their villages during the harvest season. Since there is little or no standardization in curriculum across schools, the children of these families are never enrolled in any school.

Dream of a day when every child is in school....

A number of SeeYourImpact partners are addressing the issue of ensuring that every child in India gets a good education.

Aseema works in partnership with government schools in Mumbai, Pratham at it’s peak, conducted remedial education classes for 34 million children, Pardada Pardadi runs a school for girls in rural Uttar Pradesh, Shoshit Seva Sangh runs a boarding school for boys from the Mushahar community in Bihar, Isha Vidhya runs seven schools in Tamil Nadu, Sankurathri Foundation runs a school in Andhra Pradesh,  Amar Jyoti runs integrated schools in Delhi and Gwalior, Sahaara runs pre-primary centers in 8 slum communities in Mumbai and Ashraya Initiative for Children prepares disadvantaged children from Pune for school.

Kalimuddin, Arthi and Anuj can dream of a future better than what their parents enjoyed. With your support, many more children can start dreaming that dream too.