Wilderness Rwanda & CITW facilitate 200 scholarships for 2024-25 school year

The awarding of a milestone 200 six-year CITW scholarships has made the start of Rwanda’s new secondary school year extra festive! As flag-bearer for Wilderness Rwanda’s Educate and Empower pillars of its impact strategy, Children in the Wilderness (CITW), is proud to announce that further to the 177 scholarship children from last year, an additional 23 students are now recipients of a CITW scholarship!

The funding for these 200 scholarships has been made possible by generous donations from Wilderness Bisate, Sabyinyo and Magashi guests and trade partners.

The 200 students are sponsored for six years of schooling at Bisate Secondary Schools near Wilderness Bisate, and at Rushubi Secondary School situated close to Wilderness Sabyinyo – both in the Volcanoes National Park area; other schools the children attend are Rwabiharamba Secondary School in the area just outside Akagera National Park (where Wilderness Magashi is located) and Kinihira Secondary School close to Gishwati Forest. 

Furthermore, as more of our students advance to higher grades, they move to other schools, and an additional 57 secondary schools are now involved. 

The scholarships are valued at USD1,800 per student for the duration of the six years. Included in the scholarship are the children’s school fees, lesson and study materials, school meals and school uniforms. This brings the total value of the 200 scholarships to USD360,000 – truly impressive support for the students, their families, and the community at large!

To ensure that all 200 students were ready to start their first school day of the year with a big smile, our CITW team visited all of them in the first week of September to provide them with the school materials they will need for this year. Backpacks, notebooks, calculators, rulers, pens, pencils and mathematical sets were distributed, and received with big smiles.

In Rwanda, secondary school years run from Senior 1 to Senior 6, or Grade 1 to Grade 6. When in Senior 3, or S3, all students need to partake in national exams. The results of these exams determine where the student will continue their remaining school years of S4 to S6. Depending on their school results and study direction, many of our scholarship students are now placed in different schools in Rwanda. This means that our CITW students who are continuing in S4, S5 and S6, are branching out all over the country, and of course, still flying the CITW flag high. So, besides the four Secondary Schools that Wilderness and CITW have partnered with, we now have students in an additional 57 schools all over the country!

The additional 23 students are all starting their first year of secondary school, referred to as S1. The remaining 177 students received their scholarships in previous years, and although they all originally started in S1, they are now spread over S2, S3, S4, S5 and S6. The 2024-25 school year will see the first graduates of our scholarship programme in Rwanda when they complete their schooling in Senior 6. Our entire Wilderness Rwanda team will be so proud when the first students, who were part of CITW when the programme started in 2018, will receive their secondary school diplomas!

This coming school year our CITW scholarships will be supporting 35 students at Rwabiharamba Secondary School, five new scholarships in Senior 1, and in Senior 2, 3 and 4 a total of 30 students. At Kinihira Secondary School we are sponsoring a total of 40 scholarships, for whom five are new students in S1, with 35 students in S2, S3 and Senior 4. Bisate Secondary School has the highest number as this is the sixth year of our scholarship support. A total of 117 students received the scholarship, with five new students in Senior 1, and the remaining 112 students from Senior 2 to Senior 6. This year is the first time that students starting in Senior 1 (eight in total) have been selected for a scholarship at Rushubi Secondary School.

Our CITW Rwanda team, the various Community Committees, Eco-Mentors and the Heads of the schools carefully chose the 23 additional learners on the basis of academic merit and participation in their Eco-Clubs (CITW’s interactive, fun and educational environmental skills programme for primary school children) at our four partner primary schools: Bisate, Rushubi, Akayange and Gisunzu. Besides school results and participation, gender equality is naturally also considered when making the final selection. Of the 200 students, we have 98 young ladies and 102 boys.

Now enrolled at their respective secondary schools, these youths will continue their extra-curricular environmental education via our CITW YES (Youth Environmental Stewardship) Clubs. The YES Club is designed for older learners, expanding on the conservation concepts introduced in Eco-Clubs. 

In order to retain the scholarship in each grade, learners must maintain good academic results while showing dedication, motivation and good behaviour. CITW & Community Manager for Wilderness Rwanda, Aline, and her dedicated and ever-cheerful assistant Damascene, monitor the progress of each learner on a regular basis.

Now you might wonder how Aline and Damascene manage to organise all this for 200 students? Well, the first answer to this is that they work hard and are very motivated and committed! They do however, also receive assistance from the school leaders, the community committees and also from the parent committees that are active for each group of scholarship students.

“We keep records of all school results, have regular meetings with the schools, parents and the teachers, and we keep in contact with all 200 students in our scholarship programme. In this way, we can ensure that all of them are doing well, and stay motivated to perform in the best possible way. If there are any problems at home, with school supplies or their study results, we will notice this early on, and the CITW team can provide extra support if required. It is fantastic that so many of our students are progressing in their secondary studies. I cannot wait for our first students to graduate during the next school year of 2024-25”, said a proud Aline.

Damascene noted how proud they are to have achieved this milestone of 200 scholarships! “Our aim is to remain on this number of 200, meaning that we will try to secure a new scholarship for a student starting in Senior 1 for each student that graduates this year”.

“We are very grateful for our donors’ support. Without their contribution we would not be able to make this impact! What started as a small programme with just eight CITW scholarships has grown substantially to 200 over a period of six years. This is our commitment, not only to the children, but also to the families and community at large, as we have realised that the impact is huge in the families and the villages that the children are from. These families have limited means, which they can now use for other purposes while their child’s education is secured. The CITW scholarship programme supports our Wilderness Impact Educate pillar just as much as it supports the Empower pillar in the villages”, added Aline.