Dear youth, pave your dignified life today.

Rwanda is known as the country with the highest percentage of women in a single-house parliament worldwide. The Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda puts efforts for the promotion of gender balance by declaring that all Rwandans are equal before the law and the country's constitution gives a 30% quota for women in all decision-making organs as one way to give great importance to the promotion of gender equality and equity as a prerequisite for sustainable development. From that mandate, there are more women in political institutions with more than 60 percent in parliament, and prospective men and women now have equal opportunities in education, healthcare, business, and property. The government has also invested in legal and policy frameworks to promote gender equality between both genders, as a way to eliminate gender inequalities in all sectors of practical life, achieve the nation’s goal for sustainable development, and provide an enabling environment for the promotion of gender equality in education, promotion of human right in Rwanda and eradication of gender-based violence through the development of a preventive, protective, supportive and transformative environment. The laws were developed to weaken the crimes and offenses linked with gender-based violence, the recent Rwanda penal code of 2018 determining offenses and penalties, in general, gives a special recognition of sex offenses to at least finalize the Gender-based Violence and all discriminates attached to gender.

Although there are many initiatives put in place to promote gender balance and integration of gender issues into the policies, and programs, there is still the problem of an increase in teenage pregnancies especially in rural areas. According to the recent Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey 2019-20 (DHS, 2019-20) stated that the national teenage pregnancy rate for girls aged 15-19 years is 7%, which is higher than the global average of 5%. Among the factors of that rise are limited access to sexual and reproductive health services, and gender-based violence, and girls from rural areas are at a higher risk of early pregnancy and motherhood than those from urban areas.  To deepen the risk factors,  we have found that there is a gap in sharing SRHR information from parents to children. this affects young children due to they do not accumulate the necessary SRHR knowledge sharing from parent to children, and live in a world of bad information on SRHR. To improve SRHR outcomes by breaking up all root causes and barriers that affect youth and children from having all knowledge about SRHR.

Our solution will be to develop a youth newspaper that will targets to improve SRHR understanding for youth so that they can be fully equipped with the necessary information, which will help to prevent consequences linked to bad information on SRHR.

We have designed the following activities for empowering young girls and boys, teen mothers, and adolescent girls who dropped out of school in rural areas:
 Awareness campaign in schools: Mobilizing young girls and boys in the implementation of gender balance principles and how should quit cultural beliefs, gender discrimination, and myths that categorize girls as weak and boys as strong. Through this campaign, 20 Gender clubs (1 of girls and another of boys) at each school will be established in all schools of the Kirehe district. Those clubs will be like channels to disseminate the message to the students.

 Supporting Girl's Safe rooms at each school. The UMUBYEYI INITIATIVE will distribute sanitary pads to young girls from vulnerable families

Our solution will be to develop a youth newspaper focusing on SRHR care and services. We decided to work on it because we have found that many adolescents bear consequences due to bad information from unreliable sources. That information will be like shedding light and will open up youth as more young people learn about these issues, the more they learn that it has to do with human rights. therefore having access to sexual and reproductive health and rights can decrease child marriage, decrease teenage pregnancies, and prevent transmission of sexually transmitted infections. It is a topic that affects so many different realms of people's lives however, it is often not seen to matter as much because it is assumed to  not necessarily outright affect food, shelter, or health, but it really does.”

UMUBYEYI INITIATIVE organization believes in the technical capacity of our team from our background of studies, experience from the previous projects' documentation, and training. We have started working with teen mothers in the project we conducted in two sectors of the Kirehe district where we empowered 286 teen mothers in a period of 12. This project had five
thematic areas Saving and lending activities, psychosocial support, distributing a laying hen program that had to provide chicken for each teen mother, teaching income-generating training, and training on value and social norms for good Rwandans. After this project, we also conducted another project with teen mothers which had to foster rural young women and girls' dignified lives through GBV Prevention, awareness raising for reproductive health, improved living, and a sustainable economy underfunding of Imbuto Foundation, UNFPA Rwanda and KOIKA Rwanda. This project had many activities in the community to change the lives of 172 vulnerable teen mothers of the Kagarama, Nyamugali Musaza, and Mahama sectors of the Kirehe district. We had also partnered with a Tanzania
organization called Young Lawyer Organisation in a project that had a target to mitigate gender-based violence and protect against sexual exploitation and abuse under the funding of NELSAP. In this project, our aim was to raise awareness in the community, to engage them in
the fight against gender-based violence. We have prepared a team member to our focal person in the area so that they can facilitate the community to understand gender-based violence and sexual exploitation and abuse. recently, we remarkably recorded the impact of the SRHR project called Girls Get Equal that UMUBYEYI INITIATIVE implemented under funding of Plan International (Rwanda). this project aimed at engaging school-aged children and youth in understanding their sexual and reproductive health so that they can be at the forefront of the fight against teenage pregnancy that ruins girls' lives and robs their potential by ceasing their education and giving them motherhood life.
 The aforementioned projects have helped the UMUBYEYI INITIATIVE team to increase their project management skills and helped them to understand young girls and boys and teen mothers as well as got necessary capacity to understand problems that girls and women encounter in their daily lives.

Our solution is a prototype because this solution was tested on a small scale through teaching, in a formed gender club to address the same issues but didn't offer the total expected outcomes. For now, the SRHR newspaper will be printed and distributed in rural schools and all students will have access and affordable information from those schools.

Our solution of developing an SRHR newspaper specific for youth and children is considered more innovative because it will combine all techniques of behavior change communication to address sociocultural barriers and the fact that sexuality is considered a taboo subject which makes it difficult to discuss and can create barriers to the access and use of SRHR services and care. Referring to our existing projects, we have found that SRHR communication needs to focus on age and gender matters. In previous projects, we used to conduct an awareness-raising campaign but we found it failed to ensure that every young girl and boy met. whenever this material is available, we reach out to all students and ensure that all young girls and boys get the required package to mitigate all root causes and barriers.

Within five years, we believe that we will have a big contribution to the reduction of teenage pregnancies, and early motherhood, the reduction of school Pout has reduced cases of gender-based violence and increased the number of young people seeking sexual and reproductive health and rights services. will be increased.

The solution will respond to the problem because the lack of information on SRHR services and care leads to an increase in teenage pregnancies. when the information is made available to young boys and girls, the problem will solved.

Fulltime staff: 3

Part time staff: 6

5 years

UMUBYEYI INITIATIVE is an organization founded by youth in Kirehe district with the aim of helping vulnerable groups and indigenous people especially women and youth with knowledge and skills that would empower them and contribute to their lives. The organization engages the vulnerable groups in various income-generating activities along with their regular farm and off-farm jobs. It engages them in the fight against gender imbalance and trains them to be core sources of a bright future for themselves, the community, and the country. The main vision is to see empowered women and men striving for a bright future without any attempt of sexual and gender-based violence. UMUBYEYI INITIATIVE awarded the IAccelletor Phase 3 (2017,2021 and 2023) on the URUJENI Project, the award provided by the IMBUTO Foundation on funds of UNFPA and KOICA. The organization awarded the CYRWA award (2017) (Celebrating Young Rwandan Achievers) by Her Excellency First Lady Mrs. Jeannette Kagame through the Imbuto Foundation and Ministry of Youth and Culture for the work she performed for uplifting different youth groups and young women of Kirehe district. UMUBYEYI INITIATIVE was founded in the Kirehe district and has expanded its activities to the Rwamagana district.

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The UMUBYEYI INITIATIVE is used to collect funds for its activities. However, it plans to make money from selling the produced newspapers. in order to ensure the project's sustainability, the requested funds will facilitate the multiplication of newspaper copies and subsidies the cost of newspapers so that schools and youth from marginalized families can have access to SRHR information, services, and care.