In 2015, Bamporeze, a local nonprofit making organization submitted a rare project that a few people would think would yield results, but it has proven to be a project of the community.

The project consisted of training teen mothers in reproductive health, family planning, HIV prevention and economic empowerment.

It also included a component of counseling. The Global Fund through CCM/MoH was interested, thus the project was funded.

Though teenage pregnancy is not unique challenge to a given district, Bamporeze first narrowed down to a number of districts where they would operate from.

Gakenke, Musanze district – Northern Province and then Nyabihu of Western Province were selected.

Bamporeze contacted youth centers of these districts which connected them to their potential beneficiaries.

The start of a-6 month training was not easy. Trainers recall seeing teen mothers coming every morning with their babies, which, to a certain extent, would disrupt the training.

Initially, said one of the teen mothers now in the ongoing third phase of the project, “our parents thought that we were not going for a good cause. They said that the trainers intended to turn us prostitutes, much as we were already vulnerable and considered an insult in our families.” 

With this challenge, trainers involved grassroots leaders and used them as messengers to tell the parents of teen mothers to try and give the latter an enabling environment to learn skills that would help them defy the odds.

The message, said one of the teen mothers, was like; parents, these children most probably got early pregnancy because they did not have enough information about reproductive health from the family. They need your support and compassion.

With time, the parents who had sometimes refused to give food to the teen mothers and their babies started heeding and they later on understood that the children are theirs and can only heal if they support them.

At this level, parents started helping their children heal the wounds of past experience which loosened the burden of early parenthood.

With this, Bamporeze, through the Global Fund, managed to change the behavior of parents and to revive hope of better future among the teen mothers.

Entrepreneurship mindset

The training continued, and something interesting happened. The teen mothers, though that they did not have means, recalled that the little money they were being given in form of transport allowance could be a start-up capital.

With saving skills acquired from the training, they did not wait.

“We were given a total of Rwfrs 9000 worth of transport; I saved it and added some other Rwfrs 2000 savings and started a project of selling Irish potatoes,” says Clementine Mukanoheli, a beneficiary from Gakenke.

Mukanoheli started with Rwfrs 11,000 with a capacity of 100 kilograms, and has now grown up with a capital of Rwfrs 60,000 and a capacity to supply 600 kilograms thrice a week.

Her colleague Emertha Musabyimana managed to save Rwfrs 6000 which she used as a start-up as a vegetable retailer. She has now grown to a capital of Rwfrs 40,000.

For Bamporeze, the journey is still long for these teen mothers to recover. 

With the three years ahead in this intake, they wish to have the teen mothers study technical skills, so that when they graduate, they join the labour /entrepreneurship market with confidence.