Former Miss Rwanda finalists, Yassipi Casimir Uwihirwe and Phiona Umwiza have started a project to help shape a better future for teenage mothers through their newly-launched initiative.

The initiative, dubbed ‘Ntitubahane’ which (loosely translated as let us not reject them), aims to raise advocacy for teen mothers, specifically aged between 15 and 18 years, living dejected and miserable lives as a result of being stigmatised in the community due to early pregnancies.

The initiative is part of the implementation phase of the projects the duo pitched during the previous editions of the beauty contests.

Uwihirwe runs a project that deals with supporting children born to teen mothers while her counterpart Umwiza deals with a life-changing project to bring back hope for teen mothers rejected or abandoned by the communities.

The duo told the media that they decided to join hands and start the initiative together after they realized that their projects would ‘make a huge impact’ to give a helping hand to ten mothers to improve their living standards.

"We discussed how we can make something big out of our two projects and work together to deal with problems facing both teen mothers and their children,” Umwiza said.

The idea to come with the initiative was, according to Umwiza, to console teen mothers, give them hope to bounce back and live a better life with their children as well as raise advocacy for them so that the society’s negative perspective towards them can change.

They are then brought into the world of business by providing them with startup capital after equipping them with business career guidance.

"People have different perspectives about teen mothers, and some end up abandoning them. Through this initiative, we are raising awareness in communities to stop abandoning teen mothers and instead motivate them how to cope with life and overcome all the challenges they go through after giving birth at early age,” Umwiza said.

The initiative started in February with 64 teen mothers in Gatenga, Kicukiro District, by providing them with training in tailoring, shoemaking, soap making and food processing.

Following the coronavirus pandemic, the initiative resumed its activities in September, reaching out to 74 teen mothers in Bwishyura Sector, Karongi District, where they introduced them to rabbit farming.

Before telling them about business, however, Umwiza said they approach teen mothers to first hear them where they share their stories, their pain from which they start to heal their pain, comfort them and then build hope that they can live a better life again after all.

The initiative also educates teen mothers’ parents and other members of the community on why they should not abandon teen mothers and instead play their role in helping them to regain hope to regain confidence to rebuild a better future ahead.

Despite limited resources, Uwihirwe revealed that the initiative is already making a positive impact among its beneficiaries based on their recent feedback.

"This is something that we did from our own budget. We tried to finance it and, since then, we created a kind of understanding among those young women that there is somewhere further they can go,” she said.

She said the initiative remains a long-term project will be there to stay and it will help change people’s understanding of treatment of teen mothers in communities.

Through the initiative, the duo target that at least 1000 young women will have started their own businesses by 2021,

The initiative also targets to have generated income worth Rwf10 million and create over 3000 jobs in the same year.