RVCP LAUNCHED THE GENDER EMPOWERMENT PROJECT

Culture and traditions in Rwanda have never been fair to girls; till today girls and women are still perceived as housemaids with very low intellectual capacity in comparison to boys, for this reason girls have been left behind in all aspects and this brought girls to the loss of self-confidence.

The National institute of statistics for Rwanda (NISR) shows that at the level of high decision making organs gender equality is improving. However, positions traditionally occupied by men are still male dominated; for example, 90 % of all District
Mayors are men and 83.3 % of Vice Mayors of Economic Affairs as well, while 83.3 % of all Vice Mayors of Social Affairs are women. Key positions, such as heads of learning institutions, hospital directors and senior officers of the police force to mention a few, show big gender gaps with very few women. In education the gender gaps increase with the level; primary education employees are equal numbers men and women but in secondary and higher education men occupy 70 % of the posts.

Equipping these teenage girls with Leadership, Life Skills, Healthy Living, goal setting, Saving Culture, HIV&STIs, prevention of unwanted pregnancies will enable them to give back to the community bridging gender gap.

RVCP through Gender empowerment (Pyramid) program launched the Girls Empowerment Project (GEP) since late 2017 by which selected high school are regularly visited to equip teenage-girls in various aspects with an aim of developing them into future leaders that will affect the overall success of the country and the whole world as well.

“The most impactful approach that we could use in bringing back to the community of high school teenagers is to visit them at school and to nurture their knowledge in prevention of teen pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, STDs, malaria, NCDs and TB.” said Mick Ndayishimiye, the Pyramid program director pioneering the GEP project. Moreover, the GEP was set to be a field for boosting the leadership and public speaking skills for students in such a way that they can contribute to the development of new Rwanda.

Interactive teaching sessions, where teenage-high school students were given comprehensive reproductive health education which have remained unprovided for decades ago.

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