ACTEC Empowering Educators: Unlocking the Potential of Youth through Entrepreneurial Education in Rwanda

The participants of the two-day training, which ended on Wednesday, August 9,2023, at the Salesian Provincial House in Kigali, affirmed that the courses they attended will continue to help them teach the youth more effectively and enable them to utilize what they learn through entrepreneurial opportunities.

The training provided by ACTEC focused on Entrepreneurial Pedagogy, which encompasses various creative and interactive teaching approaches that foster engaging and impactful learning experiences for students.

It was intended for trainers from Don Bosco Muhazi TSS, Maison Shalom, trainers from Mahama Refugee Camp, the APEFE team, and participants from St. Mary Dominique Mazzarello TVET-Gisenyi.

Commenting on the acquired skills, Mr. Isak from Maison Shalom said, “We have learned a lot from the pedagogy of entrepreneurship in terms of new ways, activities, and innovations that we can introduce into our education system.”

Mr. Isak from Maison Shalom

He explained that “Because we have vocational training and we work to transform our beneficiaries into entrepreneurs, with the new skills we acquired from this particular workshop, we are optimistic that we are going to bring new changes in terms of transforming our participants into self-sufficient individuals”

Maison Shalom is the national organization that works to support refugees and other vulnerable people from the host community. They support mainly young people in training and apprenticeship as well as economic empowerment. Its work is mainly in a refugee camp of Mahama in the Eastern Province of Rwanda where there are thousands of refugees.

Mr. Isak added that “Working with vulnerable people is not easy because most of the time you don’t manage to avoid the act of dependency. So with the new skills we learned, how to support a person to move towards development, independence, reflection and self-sufficiency. We think the new skills we learned here will be of importance to achieve our objectives.”

Last year, ACTEC organized similar training and participants in the previous training have started to record positive impacts in youth education as well as in their entrepreneurship journey.

According to Sister Adeline Benimana from St. Mary Dominique Mazzarello TVET-Gisenyi, “To our part, as Saint Mary Dominique Mazzarero, we have used previous knowledge in different activities so that the trainees can understand well the courses which we are offering.”

She said “In didactic material there are some like games, cards, all those we have been using so that the trainees also can understand well.”

“Concerning entrepreneurial skills, we have started different clubs and these clubs are being accompanied such as the Eco Green Club which is in charge of taking care of the environment while at the same time working together to increase the knowledge and also income for the trainees.” She said,

“We started something of a canteen and this has been working so much until now. The club has two hundred thousand Rwandan Francs (200,000 Rwf) which is going to generate other projects.” Sister Benimana added.

“In the same club we also have the project of planting the mushrooms and this started as a trial. The first trial was done and we are going to continue. We have so many other clubs which have not yet started to generate the income which is also in the process as we shared in this training that everything goes step by step.” Sister Benimana explained.

“Madam Laurence (ACTEC Trainer) helped us to understand that we have to check about the background of the trainees or the young people which we have. We should not concentrate on the person whom we see behind but we should see the inside

“So we appreciate ACTEC for this support and also it helps us also for knowledge sharing with Muhazi, with Maison Shalom, with APEFE Mweya which is a good way to make friends and we learn from what the others have been doing. So thank you very much to ACTEC, thank you to Madame Laurence and all those who are supporting us.” Sister Benimana concluded.

Sisters INSHUTI Z’ABAKENE from Don Bosco Muhazi TVET School also participated in the training

On the other hand, the trainees request that there should be a way to support youth projects because they mostly have ideas but lack the resources to implement them.

Mr. Ndahayo Jean Claude, the Coordinator of ACTEC activities at Don Bosco Muhazi TSS confirms that in general the youths do not have resources and he adds that it can be a good move if partners can also see how youths can be given support when they start their projects.

He said, “You find that young people have business ideas but it is difficult to implement them because of limited resources. If It is possible in this program our partners can see how they can support young people with good ideas while starting profitable projects.”

ACTEC is an NGO founded in Belgium, with an international presence. It has been promoting Education since 1982 together with its local collaborators. To date its work has already helped countries in Africa and Latin America.

Group Photo taken after the training