A-Bato is a Rwandan NGO, whose mission is to ensure the well-being of vulnerable children and their parents, especially girl-mothers.
A-Bato has set up a specific project to take care of 20 underage girl-mothers who have had to drop out of school due to unwanted pregnancies. Twenty girl-mothers, aged between 14 and 18 years old, with a minimum of 6th grade and 1 to 3 years of secondary school were selected. The goal is to support these young people in learning a trade of their choice for one year (October 2021 to October 2022) and to ensure secondary follow-up.
It is particularly important to help these young underage mothers, as they are most often rejected by their families and the community, following this pregnancy outside of marriage. The project therefore also involves sensitizing the family and the community, as the reintegration of the underage girl-mother and her child is essential.
The November 2024 visit by the Hermann Foundation’s founder and president to the A-Bato association in Kigali is all the more interesting and important as A-Bato is a project that the FH has been following for years. Hindsight allows us to see the long-term results, and needless to say, it was a pleasant surprise.
At the reception in the association’s premises (sewing workshop and center under construction), most of the beneficiaries of the first batches were keen to be present and testify to their success. They now have jobs or have set up their own businesses, whether in sewing, hairdressing or catering. In fact, it was one of them, now an independent caterer, who provided the meal for everyone.
A-Bato is thus fully successful in its mission to reclaim these young women in distress and enable them to lead decent, dignified lives. Their method, which also includes the families, is so effective that many young girls/women in the region are now asking to benefit from the program.
A new intake for early 2025 is currently being selected, while the 15 young women who will complete their sewing course in December 2024 are already organizing to set up a cooperative that will enable them to sell their production.
The immediate future of A-Bato, in addition to the training of new batches (for the moment in sewing only), is the acquisition of more sophisticated machines enabling the production of more elaborate items, as well as progress on the construction of the center, which will be equipped with sanitary facilities (toilets and showers), a large kitchen, training premises to be able to diversify these, dormitories and a large meeting room (canteens, weddings, meetings and shows of all kinds, with the aim of generating some income), the only one in the whole community.
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