Achievements & Goals

01

Founded the organization

Thanks to the generous support of the U.S Embassy Kigali, we have an office space and selected one of our members who serves as a volunteer project manager. We are officially recognized and registered by the Rwanda Governance Board, a government body responsible for registering, regulating, and governing non-governmental organizations in Rwanda.

02

Established partnerships

With other local organizations (mainly AIESEC, University of Rwanda, Akilah Institute for women and 5 public high schools) to effectively implement our projects described below:

The LEADers fellowship is an initiative developed by LEAD to provide trainings, coaching and mentorship, learning trips, national summits and tournaments as well as internship and re-integration spaces for student leaders in tertiary education. The initiative combines a highly practical and interactive approach that targets to reinvent and transform student leaders.

The first phase of implementation of the LEADers Fellowship Program is the Student Leadership and Entrepreneurship Development Training (SLEDT).               

The training exploits VCAPS (Vision, Continuity, Accountability, Productivity and Sustainability); a tried and tested leadership development module adopted from LEAD Transformative Initiative. This module encompasses values that are vital to today’s leadership development. All materials and contents of SLEDT are aligned with the VCAPPS module.  So far, 4 training sessions at four different days were conducted at four different university campuses across the country. A total of 48 student leaders from six different universities were trained.  The program concluded its first-year phase with a conference with brought together 9 universities in Kigali (3 colleges of University of Rwanda, and 6 independent universities).

The project aims at instilling an entrepreneurial spirit in youths in secondary schools with focus on agriculture. Since farming is the main economic activity for the people of Rwanda providing employment to about 86% of the total population and accounting 30% of the country’s GDP, we feel this is an essential area of intervention. So far, we have partnered with five secondary schools and formed 5 agribusiness clubs, one at each school. Each club comprises 15 students who were provided with equipment, supplies and training to work on their gardens on the school campus.

On June 24–25, 2019, Young African Leaders convened at LEMIGO HOTEL – KIGALI, RWANDA for YALI East African Regional Convening under the theme “African youth stimulating good governance as a panacea for growth and development”. LEAD (Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Accountability for Development) was honored to present its alumni engagement strategy, share valuable lessons learned, and discuss future plans at a recent event.

Our aspirations

Future goals

  1. Expand LEAD to become inclusive of Rwandan alumni from other programs funded by the US Government. We hope this will enlarge our scope of expertise, bring more energy and extend our network.
  2. Increase participation of members in the organization through partnerships with members’ already existing organizations and a variety of social events to build community and connections.
  3. Partner with Rwanda Youth in Agribusiness forum to provide agribusiness training to the formed clubs in schools and reach more schools.

4. Increase youth participation in building democratic communities through youth-friendly civic actions, duties, as well as raising awareness on civil rights. We will Partner with the National Youth Council to organize youth-led civic events in communities as follows:

    • Civic action: Umuganda (monthly community works), volunteerism and service-learning.
    • Civic duties: awareness campaigns to raise youth’s participation in good governance (politics, elections, public service, etc.)
    • Civil rights: awareness campaigns to raise youth’s knowledge about their civil rights so they can become active citizens, and advocates for equity, opportunity, and strong services.

5. Activate responsible and transformative leadership, enhanced youth entrepreneurship and employability for institutional, national development and economic growth. Every year, at least 75 student guild council members from 5 universities go through a 6-staged cycle of training namely:

    • Leadership training using VCAPPS (Vision, Continuity, Accountability, Productivity and Sustainability) model.
    • Student Leadership & Entrepreneurship Development Tournament (SLEDT) where the winning team receives support to implement their project.
    • Student Leadership & Entrepreneurship Development Tournament (SLEDT) where the winning team receives support to implement their project.
    • Learning trips to have first-hand interaction and inspiration from effective leaders of business, public and civil society organizations.
    • Internship & Mentorship whereby we connect the young leaders with their more advanced counterparts in our partner organization to help them during their leadership and entrepreneurship endeavors.