THE JEWISH HELPING HANDS DIGITAL LEARNING CENTER
In Kigali, Rwanda, the Jewish Helping Hands Digital Learning Center is a dedicated space at the MindLeaps Center to support 21st century skill development for some of the world’s poorest children.
The Learning Center opened in 2022 as a renovated, modern classroom with 20 new laptop computers, Wifi and modern classroom teaching materials, like a projector and digital camera. Every year, MindLeaps plans to serve 100 children in the IT/Digital Skills course taught by one of MindLeaps first high school graduates, Fiston Sindambiwe.
With the support of Jewish Helping Hands, vulnerable children from the community now have the chance to learn how to type, access the internet and create projects – like sales websites and resumes. Most of these children had never touched a computer before entering the Jewish Helping Hands Learning Center; now, their education levels and employment options are forever changed!
Watch the video which summarizes the 2022 renovations:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1INWCSW8F-eBmZB0HKyien4cNvl5QfRPs/view?usp=sharing
Protein Project For New Mothers: Eggs and Milk
Newly delivered, poor mothers, are given eggs and pints of milk donated by JHH, to each woman, each day, providing the protein essential to recovery.
At Kibagabaga, Ines, the Assistant Social Worker, is running our project. There are some 10,000 births a year. We help more than 4000 new mothers plus the 2500 at CHUK. It costs about $1.50 per new mother! This project is literally a lifeline for them.
We also give out the handmade baby caps and put them on the babies' heads. There's a big discussion about the appropriate color caps for boys and girls, especially since the pinks are very pink and there are a lot of newborn boys. In the end, it was agreed that yellow would be fine.
As usual, there are mothers who do not have the bus fare for the ride home and are in limbo at the hospital. there. JHH pays the bus fare, on average $30 per mother, for as many as ten mothers to go home immediately.
In 2022, JHH is now providing eggs and milk to 15,000 new mothers and baby formula to 324 newborns. It is literally a lifeline for all of them.
AVEGA’s Genocide Widows
For the past ten years, JHH has supported some forty genocide widows in partnership with AVEGA – the Association of Genocide Widows. It has 19,000 members but there are so many thousands more. AVEGA’s Director Etienne and Olive, the Social Worker who works directly with the women, enable JHH to meet the women’s daily needs and to give them hope for the future.
At present, JHH is supporting 26 women who live in small villages in five different Kigali neighborhoods. They come together to share in savings groups, develop small joint ventures and have weekly meetings of mutual support. With our annual payment of $500, they are able to meet all of their basic needs from food and clothing, to utilities and solar panels, school fees for their children and grandchildren, house repairs and anything else they may need. The money is deposited in the bank accounts established by AVEGA for each of them.
We visit with each woman in her home to determine her personal needs and situation, but first, several of the women pray for us and for JHH. We hear terrible stories of women being raped or beaten and left for dead. Many tell us they’re feeling “ok” when they clearly aren’t. We learn that Clothilde’s bed has collapsed; Leocadie needs Nexium/Omeprazole; and everyone would benefit from multi-vitamins with iron. JHH will try to meet those needs. We bring in a flashlight for each one so they can go out safely in the evening.
Mariam is so excited to see us. She tells us that her daughter Zubeda is trying to get support for higher education, but since she failed the High School exams, that may not be possible. Olive will try to find a way to help her to qualify.
We also meet with Francine, the very capable Mt. Kigali group leader who has been with us from the beginning. She takes care of 11 people on her own. Eight are students in school for whom she is the only one to pay school fees. She overcomes her physical weaknesses to work as a cleaning woman in a kindergarten for $25/month and cannot make ends meet. We will give her an extra $250/year to cover all eight students. Her tears of frustration turn to ones of joy as she thanks us profusely. Her group has a joint savings plan and used some of their funds to plant maize, but the crop was ruined by the heavy rains. Her cow, part of a JHH project, is doing well, but it produces a small amount of milk, again due to the effect of the damaging rains on its food supply.
We are a vital lifeline for these women who have suffered and lost so much. To smile and even to laugh with them make our efforts so worthwhile.
MindLeaps
MindLeaps is a US-based, 501(c)(3) non-profit that sets some of the world’s most vulnerable children on a path towards success in school and in life. The unique MindLeaps methodology uses free dance classes to develop children’s cognitive skills and social emotional learning, across seven key skills (language, memorization, discipline, self-esteem, creativity, teamwork and grit). The result is increased school performance, positive life-decisions, and a new-found sense of belonging.
Over several years, Jewish Helping Hands has provided significant support for MindLeaps’ program of School Sponsorships; for its Meals and Sanitation program; for its Family Strengthening Program, and for its outreach to refugees in the six refugee camps in Rwanda.
School Sponsorship — Most children in MindLeaps Rwanda programs are either vulnerable youth, former street children—children who were literally living on the streets—or children living in refugee camps. When MindLeaps begins its work with these children, few were consistently attending school. Although school fees and associated expenses are low, they are beyond the means of almost all vulnerable children and refugees. Few of these children have the self-confidence to believe that they can succeed in school, or that schooling would help them to gain practical skills that will result in productive jobs. After taking free dance classes with MindLeaps, a change in mindset occurs where youth believe their lives could change for the better, and they start to set long-term goals. They become eager to enroll in school, but they also have an urgent need for financial support to make these new dreams possible. Over the past five years, Jewish Helping Hands has provided funding to afford the schooling of six children. Here are the stories of two of them: Manishimwe and Zidane.
Manishimwe was a teenager living on the streets with absolutely no family support when JHH began to underwrite his schooling, following his successful completion of the MindLeaps program. Today, he has graduated from vocational school with certificates in both plumbing and mechanics. In 2017, he did internships at the MindLeaps Center in Kigali. Now, he is earning his own living, two years earlier than was initially anticipated.
Zidane is the second oldest of 11 children in a single parent family with a hard-working Mom who struggles mightily to support her family. He is the only one of his siblings to attend school. With support from JHH, he successfully completed 6th grade at the Sonrise Boarding School at the end of 2017. At that point, he was confronted with the challenge of passing a very stressful national primary school exam. Zidane passed with flying colors and became the first member of his family ever to attend to secondary school. His school report noted: “Attending secondary school must have seemed impossible to Zidane just a few years ago, but thanks to your support, you have brought a completely different future within reach. We are so grateful to you for supporting Zidane in his academic journey.”
Meals and Sanitation — Most children who find their way to the MindLeaps Center in Rwanda live on the streets, and “support” themselves either by begging or stealing, or both. Once they join the MindLeaps program, they are provided with a simple but nutritious meal each day. Girls coming to MindLeaps usually are without support as they approach puberty and adolescence. MindLeaps provides them with health education and a Sanitation Kit that includes a set of clothing (T-shirt, track pants and shoes), a towel, nail clipper, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, a packet of sanitary napkins, a box in which to store all these items and a water bottle.
Jewish Helping Hands has been a generous supporter of the MindLeaps Meals and Sanitation program in Rwanda. A lunch meal costs $.25 for each of 100 students = 36,000 quarters for a whole year!
Family Strengthening Program — Families experiencing crises or extreme poverty may have difficulty caring sufficiently for their children. Most of the children that MindLeaps serves come from such families. Though many may be living away from their families—in the streets—when MindLeaps meets them, program graduates usually return to live in their parents’ homes. MindLeaps empowers families to build their capacity so that children can be well cared for in the long term and support can extend to their siblings.
The Family Strengthening Program is structured into “Self-Help Groups” made up entirely of parents/guardians of MindLeaps kids. Each “Self-Help Group” is made up of 20-25 parents and is operated and held accountable by a committee of representatives (president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, advisor) from within each group, by each group. There are five groups in operation. Each group meets once a week to discuss social and economic topics important to its members. The program directly serves 100 parents, and it impacts 600 lives annually.
Jewish Helping Hands has generously supported the development of the MindLeaps Family Strengthening Program in Kigali, Rwanda.
Outreach to Refugees — Late in 2018, UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees) invited MindLeaps to mount its dance-based skill-building program as a way of providing cognitive and social-emotional skills to children in all six refugee camps in Rwanda. This would provide MindLeaps with its greatest opportunity yet to significantly expand the number of vulnerable children it could support. Accepting this opportunity required MindLeaps to raise significant funding to cover the program’s substantial start-up costs. JHH made a very significant contribution, which was matched by a generous member of the MindLeaps board of directors, enabling the program to start. Today, a year later, more than 600 children have benefitted from the MindLeaps program, thanks to the generous support of JHH.
Education For All Rwanda
The mission is to give 20-30 young people ages 15 to 25 a second chance for a decent future. Christophe is the volunteer Treasurer, and has created the project with some relatives and friends. They finance their training as tailors and seamstresses. Some of them have had most horrific experiences in their young lives, all have lost one or both parents during the genocide time.
The training goes from January through June, followed by months of mentored work and skill improvement, as they sit together at the Center, each at his or her own machine. Each is ready and willing to return next year to mentor the students who will follow after them in the training. JHH is providing the "tool kits," consisting of the sewing machines and material supplies.
Marie Claire, the District Executive Secretary, gives us a list of 82 names from her district alone of extremely poor people who are eligible to participate in future cohorts.
On their own initiative, each group has created a committee, with a Chair, Treasurer, Secretary and Disciplinarian (“You know how people can get when they sit together!”). They have plans to continue together as a cooperative after they graduate and have begun to contribute to a joint business account. JHH will continue for a second year to help finance their training and provide more “tool kits."
Here is the video of the Education For All Graduation Ceremony which was held on July 21st 2020: