As part of her three-day visit to Sweden, First Lady Jeannette Kagame attended a dinner themed 'Partnering for Change' where she exchanged with guests about Rwanda's transformation journey and the contribution of the Imbuto Foundation, an organisation she founded and leads.

The dinner took place on September 14 and was hosted by Reach for Change a not-for-profit organisation that works to empower youth.

Mrs. Kagame pointed out that Rwanda has emerged from the darkness of a painful past, into the glow of sustainable progress attributing this to a “costly liberation, and deliberate reinvention”.

“These advancements are the result of ambitious and strategic leadership choices, and the actions to match. They are the Promise of a Generation,” she said

She disclosed that the Imbuto Foundation, which has for the past two decades pushed for solutions to particular challenges. For instance, she said the organisation has enrolled 100,000 children in Early Childhood Development Centres.

In addition, she pointed out that over 10,000 scholarships have been extended to brilliant secondary school students, from financially disadvantaged backgrounds and awarded to 5,113 Young girls for their Academic Excellence.

Furthermore, Imbuto facilitated 300,000 young people’s access to Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health services, including HIV screening, and placed hundreds of thousands of dollars directly into the hands of young Rwandan entrepreneurs, across dozens of projects, inspiring social change.

Sharing the Rwanda story, she said that before embarking on a healing journey, the country was assigned different names like failed state, a fractured community, ethnicity-centered broken, hopeless and helpless.

Giving a clear image of where the country came from, the First Lady said that of the more than a million victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi, 300,000 were children while 100,000 others were orphaned.

However, she said that a resilient people refused to forever lose their rich mother soil to hate divisionism.

She talked about the country’s rebirth, and indeed a bright future where life expectancy in Rwanda has increased by 42 whole years, four whole decades since 1994.

Mrs. Kagame said that hand in hand, as a nation, Rwandans have sought to create a humane, community-centred cycle of mutual support, and innovative home-grown solutions, pursuing economic transformation.

“This is what I believe to be the essence of our journey thus far, as a nation; and what we, Imbuto Foundation, a microcosm of this nation, have drawn inspiration from, to design our Holistic Cycle Approach of service provision,” she said

I believe that the heartbeat of our shared dream is improved welfare, for all the populations until now underserved, including the youth, she added.

Aurore Teta Ufitiwabo - New Times Rwanda