Rwanda Education
Save the Children has been working in Rwanda since 1994 in partnership with the Government of Rwanda (GoR) and local stakeholders to promote a bright future for children. SC has experience working in all 30 districts across the country. The main areas of focus are education, child protection, child rights governance and health and nutrition in humanitarian and development contexts. SC sets out to address the global crisis in learning by providing a continuum of services for children aged 0-9, focused on supporting emergent and early grade literacy to ensure all children leave school with grade level skills.
Early Childhood Development
First Steps (Grand Challenges Canada, 2019 – 2021, $660,865) is implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion and the National Child Development Agency (NCDA). First Steps enhances parenting practices, improves child development outcomes and increases emergent literacy promotion in the home.
Basic Education
The Advancing School Readiness (multiple donors, 2013 – 2021, $2,694,430) program is currently implemented in Ngororero and Gasabo districts and builds on learning generated from the Emergent Literacy and Maths Initiative.
Mureke Dusome (Let’s Read) (USAID, 2016-2021, $10,828,793) fostered partnerships between schools and the broader community to improve literacy outcomes for children aged 6-9 years old in Kinyarwanda.
School for Change (SFC) (IKEA Foundation, 2018-2021, $2,639,322) delivered integrated child protection and literacy interventions to prevent and respond to violence against children and improve children’s learning outcomes. SFC had three main components: Child Protection, Literacy Boost and Research.
Reading Ready (World Bank Rwanda funded by Results in Education for All Children Trust Fund, 2019-2021, $500,000) is a partnership with the Ministry of Education and the Global Digital Library and co-implemented by SC. The project builds the capacity of authors, illustrators, publishers and designers to create and digitize new books for pre-primary and translated books for P1-P3 through a results-based financing approach.
UnrestrICTed Challenge (All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development, 2021-2023, $200,000) is implemented by eKitabu in consortium with SC, Rwanda National Union of the Deaf and Rwanda Union of the Blind to ensure children with disabilities benefit from language, literacy and learning support grounded in Universal Design for Learning at home and at school. SC interventions target community libraries in Burera, Gasabo, Kirehe, Ngororero and Ruhango districts.
Schools and Systems (USAID, 2021-2026, $6,128,884) is implemented nationwide in partnership with Family for Health International and Florida State University. The overall goal is to ensure the education system enables all pre-primary and lower primary school and classroom environments to be of high quality, inclusive and focused on teaching and learning of foundational literacy skills.
Education in Emergencies
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the GoR closed schools, suspended reading clubs and enacted other measures to slow the spread of the virus. SC through its projects in Rwanda, worked with the government and other stakeholders to raise awareness and ensure learning and reading opportunities for girls and boys, with or without disabilities, continued at home in safe and inclusive environments. SC led awareness raising efforts to inform parents of the schedule for learning, highlighting the importance of supportive home learning environments and reiterating the role of parents in their children’s reading and learning at home. As part of the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) led Back to School Campaign Steering Committee, SC developed messaging and supported the GoR to safely reopen schools in 2020/2021.
