October 27, 2015
On
Sunday, Molly came to Maranyundo. Molly is a 2015 graduate of Tufts University.
She majored in Peace and Justice Studies. She was a student in my Global Educator course last spring after
spending a semester in Rwanda her junior year.
She
will be a Teaching Fellow at Maranyundo starting in January in the new school
year. Until January, Molly is working for Spark Micro-grants. Spark Micro-grants
is an organization that funds community start-ups in Rwanda, Burundi and
Uganda. She is based in Musanze near the Ugandan border. She travels to rural
villages to hold community gatherings facilitating discussions about community
needs. She is learning a great deal about Rwanda that will be so valuable to
her when she is working here at the school to support the girls and teachers.
She is enthusiastic about her current work and how it is
preparing her to relate well to the girls and staff at the school. She tells
delightful stories about her adventures traveling to the villages and learning
to commute by moped!
On Friday, I will meet with Jared Sullivan, also a 2015
Tufts graduate who was a student in
my Methods of Teaching English
course last spring. He is teaching English at a university in Kigali as a
Fulbright recipient. I look forward to telling his story after I see him.
Brother Straton joined us for lunch in Kigali after our
meeting with the Ministry of Education. He is still active in his work at
Biyamana. The school is dong well. He was in town with several students who were presenting research they
had done on climate change to the ministry of agriculture. His new project is
working with refugee camps. Some youth have been in the camps for 18 years;
they were born in the camps on the border with the DRC or they arrived as
toddlers. Beyond primary and early secondary schooling, they do not have much
preparation for skilled jobs to support themselves. He is finding opportunities
for students…one at a time…and getting them scholarships to vocational
programs. These students do very well, get jobs upon graduation and begin new
lives…literally! One young man has graduated and has been recruited by an IT
company in the US.
The girls are wearing their new grey Maranyundo sports uniforms
with great pride! Jane brought the shirts and shorts that had been printed by
her friend in Watertown and they were distributed to the girls to wear in the
afternoon sports time. Daphne, Jane and I spoke to several girls as they were
walking back to their dorm after finishing their basketball practice. At one
point, there were seven eager girls gathered around Daphne and her smart phone
looking at photos of Daphne and her daughter selecting a wedding dress for her
recent wedding. All over the world, young women are delighted by the excitement
of celebrating love and the fun of choosing special outfits!
Our meeting with an advisor to the Minster of Education was
very positive. It is always apparent that Sister Juvenal is preceded in her meetings with people by her reputation
as administering a very successful school for girls. We were pleased to hear
that he will visit the school next week to see the campus expansion, hear more
about the plans for the new Library and community outreach. He sees that the
school can be a model for how to put into action many of the aspects of the new
Competency based Curriculum Standards. This has been part of the dreaming we
all have done about how the work at Maranyundo can influence education practice
throughout the country. We were all pleased…especially to know that the
connection to the fibre optic cable
will happen. “I want to please the Sister so she can continue her good
works,” the advisor told me as we left his office.
Don’t we all!
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