Dear Readers,
We are glad to bring you our last edition of the year 2018. 2018 was quite an eventful year for Never Again Rwanda (NAR). We embarked on initiating two pillars: Education and Sustainable Livelihoods. This is because we discovered that besides engaging our beneficiaries in peace building and participatory governance initiatives, there was also the need to empower them to better their lives and improve their social-economic welfare. Both pillars benefited many people, some people got equipped with life skills, others with vocational knowledge, while others attested to have improved their reading and writing skills.
Hinged on the practice of evidence-based programming, we also conducted a research on citizen participation in local government ‘imihigo’ process, which sought to identify and assess the contributing factors to documented persisting low citizen participation in local government Imihigo process. According to the feedback we received, the research was highly appreciated and we hope that it will contribute to improved citizen participation.
Additionally, in 2018 we engaged more youth and now boost of 102 active youth clubs and associations with 4,211 members in different corners of the country. NAR focuses on youth because they stand for dreams, innovation, and new opportunities – or simply put, the future, so we believe that investing in the young people today is the best way to secure our sustainable future.
The New Year 2019 is here and we are grateful to all of you who walked with us, supported us and partnered with us to contribute to the development of our country. We hope to cultivate more strategic partnerships, expand our reach, document more lessons and success stories and share tools for our approaches and programs.
With best wishes for 2019,
I wish you a nice read!
Dr. Joseph Nkurunziza Ryarasa
Executive Director