Gasabo District’s Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) Youth League carried out a one-day workshop yesterday for its representatives at sector, cell, university and secondary school levels at Kimisagara Youth Centre.

According to Colette Gakwaya Mugwaneza, the Gasabo RPF Youth League Chairperson, the major purpose of this workshop was to empower RPF youth league representatives with skills of initiating and managing small scale businesses in order to fight poverty among themselves and fellow youth in general.

"This workshop also aims at encouraging youth to form or join cooperatives in order to improve their economic wellbeing. It will also refresh them on the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy, the section that focuses on youth,” she said, adding that the RPF being the engine of development in the country, RPF youth too should be transformed into being the engine of other youth and help them in this quest.

She further explained that this being the first time all youth representatives are meeting since they were elected, they would also be refreshed on the Party’s history and vision.

"Many of the youth are really young and this workshop will be great in terms of teaching them the values and ideology of the RPF so that they know what their exact roles are,” Mugwaneza explained.

She also took this opportunity to laud the RPF youth and volunteers whom she said did a commendable job during the just concluded Parliamentary elections which the RPF won with 78 percent.

According to Mugwaneza, the youth league has been able to fulfill most of its set targets in its Action Plan which included capacity building, sensitisation on the EDPRS, setting up of income generating projects and introduction of RPF cells in institutions of learning.

"We successfully carried out workshops in Gatsata, Jabana and Jali. If resources permit, we shall carry out more in other areas,” she pledged.

The workshop, which had about 300 participants, was taken through the history of the RPF by one of its historicals, Augustine Iyako. He made it clear why the RPF was targeting the youth, citing an incident he faced when it (RPF) was still looking for ways of getting Rwandans back from exile.

"I met these professors who kept asking questions like, "How many professors do you have?” and I told them that what we needed were people who could go for three days fighting without collapsing and not professors. These (professors and older professionals) could come after we were in power,” he explained amidst applause.

Much as he was talking about the history of the RPF, he chipped in that Rwanda wants to move from the brick and mortar way of doing business to a knowledge-based economy and no one but youth could bring that to fruition.  

One of the youth The New Times talked to in a side interview, Safari Pascal, the Vice Chairman of the Gasabo Youth league, lauded the workshop.

"It’s the first time all committees have been linked up. We shall take this new knowledge back to those we represent in order for all of us to gain and fulfill the workshop’s aim,” he commented.

In another interview, the league’s Commissioner of Justice, John Kimanuka, also lauded the workshop on its poverty eradication component, among other things.

"Justice goes hand in hand with wealth because the former safeguards the latter,” he said, and advised the participants not to leave the lessons behind at the workshop and to use their energy productively in their youth.

The Mayor of Gasabo, Claudine Nyinawagaga took the participants through mobilisation skills; Bernard Itangishaka, the former Director General of Banque Populaire du Rwanda (BPR) handled Business Opportunities; while the Executive Secretary National Youth Council, Albert Murangwa handled EDPRS for youth.

According to Mugwaneza, in two weeks’ time, other RPF youth league members in small scale businesses like motorcyclists will be trained.

Ends