Government, through the National Commission for Children (NCC), has extended the deadline to have all children in orphanages across the country join foster families to 2016.

The initiative to phase out all orphanages in the country was one of the recommendations from the 7th Children’s Summit held in Kigali in 2011, and its implementation started the same year and was supposed to be completed by the end of 2014.

The NCC Executive Secretary, Zaina Nyiramatama, said the programme has been largely successful though some problems have been encountered along the way, prompting the extension.

"Among the 4,147 children in various orphanages (by 2011), 2,137 have been reintegrated into families and eight orphanages closed. But we still face a challenge of some orphanages receiving children who escape from their parents,” she said.

At least 29 orphanages remain, though with fewer children than they used to accommodate.

She said some orphanages are reluctant to facilitate the programme and instead want to keep the children.

Another problem is lack of information regarding some children – those who have families– so that they can be reintegrated.

Nyiramatama says that some of the children deliberately refuse to divulge information.

To phase out the orphanages, government intends to integrate the children into their own families – for those who have them– or get them foster families.

The role of NCC will be to closely work with all families to ensure that the children are well taken care of once reintegrated.

"We still need sympathetic parents to foster the children,” Nyiramatama said.

She said that as a means to ensure the children receive adequate care, the NCC set up a department called "Incuti z’umuryango” (friends of families) charged with the responsibility of following on the welfare of those children in the families that take them.

"We will continue to collaborate with the families, the sponsors, local leaders and the former orphanages to financially support them in the families. We are still sensitising the people to adopt them as long as they can afford to provide for them,” she said.

Valerie Mukankaka, the head of Village de la Paix Orphanage in Kicukiro District said they have always ensured that all children grow up in a family set up.

She insists that since the programme was launched, some of their children have got families while for others, some parents had expressed interest and she was confident they will be adopted.

Mukankaka said they no longer receive children but instead support those that have been absorbed into families.

"Fostering children should be one of the Rwandan values,” she says.

Marie Rose Mutamuriza, a vendor in Kimisagara Market, Nyarugenge District, said caring for an orphan requires extra effort.

Mutamuriza, who has adopted a child, said such children require love and devotion because of the conditions they experience.

She said adopting a child does not require one to be rich, but rather one has to only be compassionate."I have 11 biological children but I have also adopted a five-year-old boy.”

The government is encouraging adoption so as to reduce the number of children who join orphanages and rehabilitation centres across the country .