Dropping out of school was a less life-changing incident for Rachel Mukeshimana, compared with getting pregnant at the age of 16. A miserable life began when Mukeshimana, who worked as a house help in Kigali, lost her job and could not afford to provide for her baby.

"It is very distressing to have a baby when you don’t have a job.”said Mukeshimana as she reminisced of her son’s first year.

But that miserable life is no more. Her life changed after she started a tailoring business, thanks to a vocational training she attended as part of a project implemented by UN Women, the United Nations agency that champions gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, with implementing support from the Young Women Christian Association (YWCA).

The four-year project titled "Fostering women and girls’ dignified lives through GBV prevention, response and women’s economic autonomy,” which is financially supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), aimed to support the Government of Rwanda in addressing gender-based violence by tackling social norms, mindsets change and the economic vulnerability of women to make them more resilient.

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The project provided legal assistance to GBV victims and focused on the economic empowerment of the most vulnerable women and girls, especially teen mothers, like Mukeshimana, who lives in Nyarugunga Sector in Kicukiro District.

Two years after the UN Women project, Mukeshimana, now aged 21, owns sewing machines and takes pride in being able to send her four-year-old son to a good nursery school.

"UN Women has had a very big impact on my life. They taught me how to have confidence in myself, how to establish good relations with other people, they really have helped me in many ways,” she said.

"They taught us about sexual and reproductive health, how to avoid unplanned pregnancies through protected sex or abstinence.”

With an income of not less than Rwf150,000 per month, Mukeshimana says she is able to do her part to meet the needs of her family supported by her husband, whom she has now been with for three years.

"For us who got the chance to meet UN Women and had someone willing to help us, we also teach other teen mothers how to save money by joining saving groups. If she is willing to learn and start a small business, she can also change her life positively from savings of two hundred every month,” Mukeshimana said. She has trained five teen mothers.

Learning a trade to support a family

In Kicukiro, the UN Women project reached 250 women including teen mothers, sex workers and other vulnerable groups, and provided them with entrepreneurship, business and financial literacy skills. More than 140 of them were trained in vocational trades, such as tailoring and hairdressing.

One of them is Yvette Murekatete, who is now hairdresser in Nyarugunga.

"By the time I met people who had benefited from the UN Women project, I had finished school, but I had no job. I was eager to learn a trade that can support me financially.” Mureketete said.

Murekatete took a hairdressing course about a year ago, and today she testified to a changed life.

"A lot has changed in my life. Today, I can get money to support my family, provide for my three children, and be able to buy clothes. My life today is different from the life I had before I took the course,” she said.

Like Mukeshimana, Murekatete also believes that the support to learn a trade had the most impact on their ability to provide for their families.

The beauty salon Murekatete and three of her colleagues started in Nyarugunga has grown to support other vulnerable women and girls who come to learn the trade. Today, there are six women whose daily lives depend on the income they get from working in the salon, which is valued at over Rwf 1.5 million.

"All of us literally had nothing to speak of before UN Women, but today we can see progress in our lives.” she said.

‘Many girls need support’

Murekatete says their business needs to grow, increase the equipment and workers, as well as the number of women and girls she and her partners can train in the trade.

"We reached a modest level, but we really want to grow further,” Murekatete says.

"If we could get another Rwf1.5 million for our salon business, that would make a big difference. We can repair the equipment we have. We would be able to train even more people. Today we have five of them, but with a bigger room and more equipment we can train up to 20.”

She thanks UN Women for its support to vulnerable women and is hopeful that the four-year project will change even more lives if it continues.

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Monique Iradukunda is one of Murekatete’s students. A teen mother, she wants to get an income that can sustain her. With modest savings, she could pay for two months of training which is now midway. "I am very passionate about hairdressing, and I would like to pay for six months of training,” Iradukunda said.

"I learnt about UN Women when Yvette talked about it. I wish I was one of those people who benefited from the project. There are many girls who need support to learn a trade that can enable them to get a stable income. I wish UN Women could support more of us,” she said.

She said once she is done with the course, she would start saving for her own business.

According to the figures from the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, around 13,000 girls under the age of 19 got pregnant between July and December 2022. Teenage pregnancy has also been on the rise for years, with more than 100,000 girls reported pregnant between 2017 and 2021, according to the Ministry.