It is true that young children have the capacity to learn and grasp new ideas and techniques early on, which means that the best time to equip someone with a skill, or discipline is when they are still young.

This applies to important aspects of life such as personal discipline, self-respect, respect for others, respect for authority, as well as physical health and emotional balance, all of which define a person.

Unfortunately, many parents believe these are traits learned later on in life as a child grows but it is the opposite, at least in the martial arts world. It is believed that these are skills and behaviours that can be honed early on.

To fully understand, this one has to sit down with karate coach, Guy Didier Rurangayire, who truly believes that learning karate or any other forms of martial arts is one of the best ways to develop a child both physically and emotionally.

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Rurangayire believes that when a child is enrolled in martial arts classes early, they get an opportunity to reach their peak potential and that is why parents should do their best to take their children through martial arts, especially karate.

He observes that if children get exposed at a young age to martial arts, such as karate, a sport which he says shapes the behaviour, character and physical conditioning of a person, the country would have a healthy population.

This is mainly so because most martial arts disciplines are guided by rules and regulations, which encourage self-discipline and inner development of a person, citing an example of Buddhist practices that most karate players follow.

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The sport emphassises self-development and encourages someone to always be better than the person they were yesterday.

"So, when we start at a young age, it will help children to develop their character and behaviour change in a positive way,” he said, adding that among other benefits, when a child is actively involved in sports and fitness, it positively impacts their character.

Among those skills they acquire is self-defence based on the reflexes the sport teaches them. In this day and age when children can easily be bullied in different spaces, teaching them self-defence techniques, especially karate is very important.

It is a mission he is dedicated to ever since he left his position at the Ministry of Sports at the beginning of December 2021, when he resigned from his role as the Director in charge of high-performance and elite sports, with focus on national teams.

At the time, Rurangayire said he resigned due to personal reasons, having served in different positions at the ministry, before and he went back to his dream community-benefit projects of promoting sports karate from the grassroots.

Today, his focus is on developing and nurturing young children to start training and equipping themselves with survival skills while at the same time imparting discipline and other values in life, through his community-benefit initiative.

"We intend to develop our high-performance training centre. Currently, we were partnering with Cercle Sportif, where we have different playgrounds like basketball courts, soccer pitches and table tennis,”

"For us, we have basketball, karate and soccer projects which seek to develop young players and push them up to elite and high-performance levels,”

Rurangayire teamed up with a group of more than 15 coaches, mostly his peers, with whom they share the same vision - developing sports and fitness.

In their group, there are about eight coaches in basketball, 10 coaches in karate and four coaches in soccer, majority of whom, if not all, have worked with him in one way or another.

"It&039;s a homogeneous one, we have been together since we were young,” he says of the group he is currently engaged with to develop sports right from the grassroots.

According to Rurangayire, it becomes easier for children who receive martial arts training early to transition to any other sport when they get to the age of 14 or 16, because they already have the minimum of fitness and basics of the sport.

"When a child changes from karate to basketball, it would be very easy because they are physically fit, they have the spirit and the discipline,” he says.

Rurangayire believes that such an approach would produce the best sportsmen for the country if training started with martial arts like karate which help create all-round athletes with the best levels of fitness and strength, before they transition into say football or basketball.

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One can live off a sport

For many Rwandan parents, sport is not something one can do for a living but rather an additional talent, but Rurangayire begs to disagree. While the industry might be less developed compared to other countries, it is possible to live off sports if played at a professional level.

The other way, especially after retirement, is to leverage the opportunities available to start making money off your talent and skills. In karate for example, one does not need a bigger space to start a karate class.

Depending on one’s ability to brand or market themselves and their track record, you can start something where people come to subscribe to learn or have their children trained. If you can do it well, it can earn you a living.

For that to happen, Rurangayire says it is important to create a platform where you can be reached and also be flexible to the client demands, such as time and availability but that also goes with having an enterprising mind as well as having the skills to train.

"If you have a very good, properly designed and well structured business plan you can easily earn a lot of money,” he says.

For karate in particular, he says they are trying their best to grow the sport. Today, the country has high performance athletes but there is still a long way to go. The future is promising because the government has provided a platform.

What remains is to capitalise on it, partner with international bodies, to create more opportunities for karate – as well as exposure, which can also translate into more earnings through endorsements and appearances.

This is still work in progress but for Rurangayire, the most important thing is that the country has positioned itself to attract such partnerships. The opportunities are immense. For now, work continues.

Rurangayire says that there are a few things to align here and there to unlock the full opportunities young people can enjoy if the sport grows to desirable levels. Unlike many careers, sports is a short term career, where players transition through very quickly.

You start shining as early as 17, and by 30 you are considered to be getting old. One of the key areas that need to be addressed should be how players can earn enough to sustain themselves throughout, as it should be.

Building a society of warriors

Rurangayire says that what makes karate unique is that the sport combines both self-defence and self-protection, with one being aware that anytime they can be attacked, yet on the other hand it is a sport that promotes peace and harmony.

Much as every aspect of karate is all about fighting, the discipline is also more about learning how not to fight, hence children grow up fit, well composed and will never get in altercations but they can defend themselves when the need arises.

He says that the philosophy behind karate states that you would rather be a warrior in the garden, looking at flowers and nature, rather than be a gardener in war times.

To sum it up, while we are equipping children with martial arts skills, we are also creating a bunch of disciplined young boys and girls who are typical warriors in and out and can confront the world ahead of them.

For Rurangayire, this would solve many issues in society, including some of the issues affecting young people, most of which come out of lack of discipline and self-control.

This is mainly so because a sport like karate calls for total discipline, where boys and girls who undergo these classes must respect a strict code of conduct and be answerable to their ‘masters’ who they view as ‘small gods’.

While sports would be the biggest beneficiary of such an approach of raising young, fit and versatile youth, it is the society that would benefit more because fit and well-anchored youth can be the foundation on which to build the future.

Born in early 1980 in Burundi, where his family lived as refugees, the 44-year-old retired athlete, who represented the country in different karate competitions at the regional, continental and global level, believes sports can be a changemaker, especially today when the youth have many distractions.

It is something he does not just say, it is something he has done, lived and studied. He holds a Master's degree in Sports and Olympic Studies. He is one of the few Rwandans with such qualifications.

He first represented the national karate team in 1999, with his first appearance being the first African Championship, and later different regional championships. He won different medals at national and regional levels.

He also served in different technical positions in the ministry, which means he has the understanding of how the industry works.

Today, he is doing personal consultancies in sports and the community-benefit project, which he believes will be a platform for him to advance not only sports but also a fit and disciplined society.

Born in a family of six as the first born, Rurangayire was stubborn as a child but at around 14, he encountered karate after his family returned to Rwanda after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

In Gikondo, where they lived, he met a neighbour who introduced him to karate and later joined a club at Lycee de Kigali where they were trained by Sensei (master) Fidele Karuranga, and he has since never looked back.

In 2003, together with a few friends, set up their own karate club based in Gikondo and started training and competing at different levels. It’s been 30 years of doing it consistently and he is not stopping soon.

While in school, karate enabled Rurangayire to feature in other sports such as track and field, soccer and handball, where he played as a goalkeeper, before eventually focusing on character, the sport that stole his heart.

It is a journey he speaks of fondly, looking back at the memories, triumphs, falls, and getting back on his fit. It is this kind of discipline that he wants to instill in young people, who today face a challenge of being inactive and leading sedentary lifestyles that could be detrimental to their health.