In 2013 Aimee Hakizimana was 15 and living in Kimonyi Sector, Musanze District. He was in Senior Three when he first realised that some parents in his neighbourhood were selling the flour (Shisha Kibondo) and milk they were supposed to feed their children as recommended by health practitioners at Kimonyi Health Center. Nutritious flour is one of the key ways that Rwanda is using to fight malnutrition and stunting among children.
According to him, the products were being bought by well-informed people who knew how beneficial it would be if fed their children. He was aware that the government has put much effort into providing these products to parents, to prevent children from stunting, but the result didn’t match the effort.
"I would ask myself, what makes a parent sell the food that was meant to save their child? And I would ask myself what I could do to help solve the issue,” he says. Hakizimana had a dream to become a social activist and do work that involves finding people in their communities and supporting them.
The centre provides nutritious meals to fight stunting and malnutrition.
In 2016 after graduating from high school, he approached Kimonyi Health Centre and asked if they could allow him to have a chat with the parents whenever they would come to the hospital to pick the flour and milk for their children. This was after he learned about childhood development and malnutrition.
When the hospital granted him permission, he started talking to the parents, enlightening them on how the support they were being given was meant to benefit their children. He later advised them to forma group, think of what to do and save money.
Starting an ECD Centre
With improved means from his salary as an accountant and from different people who loved his work, Hakizimana nurtured the idea of helping his community tackle the malnutrition issues that Musanze was facing. He then started the Social Development Initiative (SODEI DUFATANYE), an organisation that aims at improving the socio-economic situation in order to fight poverty in families, malnutrition and unawareness.
The organisation started an Early Childhood Development Centre (ECDC) that aimed to feed stunted children in Musanze, starting with Kimonyi. "We found out that the main issue was the poor mindset of parents. Sometimes, there was also conflict or poverty at home, or the parents were not informed, which was a threat to how they took care of their children.
With the case of stunting that was soaring in Musanze, we had to go far from just teaching parents but also doing something to save their children,” he says. "That’s why we decided to create an ECDC so that those stunted children could come and recover. We also wanted parents to gather and be trained on how to prepare a balanced diet and take care of their children.”
According to Hakizimana, the centre is currently helping 25 children, and his initiative keeps training parents from 38 families who can now start something that will boost their livelihood so that they can help their children after leaving the centre.
One of their partners, Ornella Tumukunde, Miss Bright 2022 of Ines-Ruhengeri, has a project that helps fight malnutrition by cultivating mushrooms. According to Hakizimana, parents joined this project to learn and work as his initiative takes care of their children.
"One part of the harvest will support the children and another will be taken to the market for sale to support the parents so that when their children leave the centre, they will be well be set financially and mentally to maintain the progress,” he says. Since he is aware that a child can stunt even when the mother is still pregnant, they also go to rural areas and offer sessions to pregnant women so that they can take care of their unborn babies.
A growing organisation
According to Hakizimana, the organisation currently has 10 official members who contribute financially and have saved money to start more projects. "We were able to establish an ECDC. It is now ours; families also approach us and we provide them with teaching on nutrition,” he adds. Their challenge is that they still fund everything on their own and that they meet parents who are not interested in learning. However, they seek to expand the centre’s activities to other sectors of Musanze and also implement ‘Village Kitchens’ in partnership with Kimonyi sector.
Aimee Hakizimana (front) during the launch of the ECDC.