Staff that makes a hero: He helped students get sponsors

EASTERN PROVINCE GATSIBO — He had home at heart that even when he went abroad he thought of how he could help the people he had left behind. He was poor but somehow felt he could find a way to help some needy children. Emmanuel Asaba Katabarwa from Gatsibo district loved to help students back home, many children from his area are benefiting from his efforts. Asaba studied civil engineering and environmental technology at Kigali Institute of Science and Technology [KIST] where he graduated with a first class honors degree in 2004. He was retained at KIST as a teaching assistant because of his outstandingperformance. In 2006 he went for a master’s degree in transport systems engineering at Cornell University in New York. It was while at Cornell that he met with Wayne Kittelson of the Kittelson and Associates, Inc (KAI). They discussed issues of the company’s work in transport engineering and a range of other issues. Kittelson reportedly asked him about the state of orphans in Rwanda which touched him and offered to help them ‘in some way possible.’ Throughout the three months he spent at KAI doing his internship, Asaba interacted with several people and created friends that would later sponsor needy children in Rwanda. Currently there are about 26 students at Gabiro Secondary School from his village in Ngarama, most of whom had dropped out of school who are being sponsored by KAI. Many had reportedly lost hope of school due to lack of tuition. Jane Uwera, an orphan from a family of eight is one of the beneficiaries in senior two, her father passed away in 2003.Since my father died, she said, my mother has been struggling to see that we go to school but it has been hard because she has no job. “But with these kind people, I have gone back to school and I will make sure I make my future bright. God bless them,” Uwera says with tears of joy flowing. KAI provides all the scholastic materials and tuition. In addition they give students Frw5,000 every month. The organisation has pledged to continue their support till the students attain high levels of education. The students have also been provided with a laptop computer connected to internet and other necessary communication gargets for use in their academics and to enable them keep in touch with their sponsors. Ends