Although the majority of SACCA’s children are currently attending primary school, those older children, who have spent many years living on the street prior to coming to SACCA, do not feel able to sit and study with the younger ones in the first year of Primary School. Rather than allow these children to fester in feelings of inadequacy, SACCA looked around for alternative means of education and skill acquisition.
Small grants from the British Embassy in Kigali enabled SACCA to set up income generating projects for these children. These projects are: t-shirt printing, soap production, banana card and necklace making.
DUSHYIGIKIRANE (Those Who Love Everyone) is an association of eight former street-children who have been trained in t-shirt printing by a local trainer in Rwamagana. The boys involved in t-shirt printing are: Emmanuel, Twiso, Mugabe, Edi, Muyovu, Samuel, Innocent and Iyakaremye.
Training took an initial three months of daily lessons in designing, cutting and printing. Following this three months the children were able to print the SACCA logo onto t-shirts well enough for us to give them to the other children as presents.
Since the training period finished these young men have begun to find themselves contracts with organisations such as VSO, RWARI and the British Embassy as well as completing their required t-shirts for sale on the SACCA website and general usage. They also used their initiative and found a supply of bags upon which they now print. The bags are particularly useful in Rwanda since the ban on plastic bags came into play but are also popular with people in Europe and the USA.
ABUNZUBUMWE (Those Who Are United) is an association of five boys living in the SACCA Kayonza centre who have been learning to make soap since January 2005. The association members are Issa, Twageriyesu, Claude, Maniraguha and Karangwa.
Although the soap they create is finally of a high quality, the ride to get to this point was slow and bumpy. Not only was it difficult to find a suitable teacher but the boys took a while to settle down and take their new career seriously.
The soap is sold to SACCA centres and is sold in the local markets by other SACCA boys eager to help out the members of Abunzubumwe.
Members of both associations work every week day morning and spend their afternoons studying with SACCA teachers. They learn basic literacy and numeracy as well as concentrating on ‘business’ English and French.
The SACCA girls have recently begun making necklaces but have not yet formed an association. Unlike the boys, SACCA girls are not in a position where they can spend all day working and learning since many of them have small children of their own requiring care and attention. By providing these girls with work they can do around child care we hope that we are helping to prevent these children becoming the next generation of Rwanda’s street-children.
SACCA provides a house in which the girls are always welcome- the open door policy means that the girls can come, with their children, to make beads and study whenever they have spare time.
Since beginning SACCA’s income generating scheme, the majority of the girls have given up prostitution and concentrated their efforts on regaining a ‘good life’.
New: Thanks to an anonymous donation from the USA, SACCA has been able to purchase four sewing machines and materials upon which the girls will soon begin learning to sew; first repairs to clothing and then when they are more skilled, they will be able to make bags, t-shirts and other items of clothing for sale.
In late November 2005 SACCA was proud to take the associations’ products to both the Rwanda Trade Fair in Kigali and the A.F.R.I.C.A Christmas bazaar. The reception at both events reflected the hard work put in by the SACCA children/young adults.
Each day a different pair of association members was accompanied by staff members to the fairs to sell their products, to explain SACCA’s work, to gain the invaluable experience of seeing how business is conducted and to see their products viewed as goods in their own right by people unrelated to SACCA. The pride and confidence events such as these instil in our children makes attending them all the more worthwhile.
