Elodie Shami has been appointed the new Director General of Imbuto Foundation, replacing Jackson Vugayabagabo, Deputy Director General in charge of Programmes, who was acting since August 2023.

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Shami has over 10 years of international experience through various roles in Child Protection, Diplomacy, Product Research and Design, as well as User Research Framework Development.

She holds a Masters of Information Systems Management and currently sits on the Board of Directors at Mētō, a US-based EdTech nonprofit working to increase access to higher education for talented international students all over the world.

Vugayabagabo has been acting in the role that was previously occupied by Sandrine Umutoni who is the current State Minister at the Ministry of Youth and Culture.

Founded in 2001 by the First Lady Jeannette Kagame, the foundation has been working a number of activities to engage, educate and empower communities in Rwanda, for example through providing scholarships to students, and rewarding girls for outstanding performance in national exams.

Over the past two decades, the foundation grew to embrace and manage programme portfolios aligned with government priorities in health, education, as well as youth and women empowerment.

Among these include Imbuto’s Promotion of Girls’ Education Campaign (PGEC) which reached out to up to 5,088 students to by late 2020 – sensitising them towards education.

It is also behind the incubation programme of Art Rwanda Ubuhanzi aimed at fostering youth empowerment by identifying young artistic talent across a wide spectrum of art disciplines, and offer them the requisite skills and tools to not only hone their respective talents, but also become creative entrepreneurs.