Eight youth-led organisations and 70 youths aged between 10 and 24 have been awarded in Youth Challenge Programme that aimed to encourage young people to deepen their involvement in civic engagement activities, contribute to solving community challenges, and use their holidays for personal growth and change-making activities. The programme is part of the implementation of Generation Unlimited (GenU) Rwanda Chapter, an initiative aimed at ensuring every young person aged between 10 and 24 is in school, learning, training or employed by 2030. The initiative was launched in Rwanda in September 2020. The contest, which was organised by the Ministry of Youth and Culture and other stakeholders consisted of two parts – Youth in Holiday Challenge and Youth-Led Organisations Hackathon. The attendees of the ceremony Through Youth in Holiday Challenge, more than 400 students participated in five categories; essays, short videos, songs, poems and drawings of cartoons while through Youth-Led Organisations Hackathon, over 50 youth-led organisations applied with their projects and 8 most impactful were selected to be awarded. The winning organisations include Peace and Love Proclaimers, TRI-Rwanda+, UmuravaWork, San Tech Ltd, Aspire Debate Rwanda, Health Relief and Development Organisation (HRDO), GAERG and Community Health Boosters, and each one has scooped Rwf 5 Million to help them strengthen their projects. The winners in Youth in Holiday Challenge were awarded with laptops, tablets, school bags, smartphones and certificates. Speaking at the awarding ceremony that was held in Kigali, Rosemary Mbabazi, the Minister of Youth and Culture noted that apart from building capacity of youth, GenU also tackles civic engagement as it promotes patriotism and other Rwandan values among youth, adding that it also involves youth in entrepreneurship and assess if they have skills to compete on labour market and what they are doing with that skill to grab existing opportunities. “We also look at what students transitioning from school to the labour market need. That includes mentorship and soft skills that can help them to be competent in the labour market,” she said. Vivens Uwizeyimana, Founder of UmuravaWork - a youth-led organisation that was awarded She noted that in Rwanda, the GenU initiative was launched during Covid-19, declaring that it is why they started with activities that challenged the pandemic so that students who were in holidays could use the opportunity to think, create and magnify their dreams. Vivens Uwizeyimana, the founder of UmuravaWork, a platform that he said has enabled businesses to access top young talents who specialise in business, technology, design creative, research and data which made them access, outsource and work with them efficiently for various projects whether in short term or long-term basis. He said that since there is still a gap in digital skills, his organisation which was awarded, is making sure that they provide various training and upscaling programs to impact young talents for them to be connected to different jobs either locally or globally. Happy Ntare Isimbi was awarded in poems category The uniqueness of our projects, he continued, relies on how we are balancing revenues and impacts in terms of business itself and how we are developing solutions that businesses are buying on a daily basis. Happy Ntare Isimbi, 10, who was awarded for her winning poem “Nimubadufatire” which calls upon the public to capture those who impregnate teen girls so that they can be brought to court, said that she was inspired by the fact that some men have raped and impregnated teenage girls during Covid-19 lockdown. With the help of her father, she seeks to expand her poetic talent and use the prizes she has scooped to excel in her studies
