Twenty-two-year-old Delphine Bayisenge from Gakenke District dropped out of school in Senior One due to an unintended pregnancy.

Though her mother did not chase her out, some friends and relatives did not provide the support she needed, leading to a severe psychological breakdown and a hard decision to drop out of school. Bayisenge noted that the community was also stigmatising her situation—which led to her leaving the community.

"Since my mother is also extremely poor, I have been struggling to cater to my kid’s needs. I am also supposed to take care of my mother because she is too sick to work. I was impregnated when I was young and this impeded my socio-economic development,” she said. Her child is about three years old.

"After experiencing such struggles, I planned to study tailoring to find ways to access finance and address basic needs but I faced financial constraints that I wasn’t able to go for it until I got a sponsor, which is Our Sisters’ Opportunity,” she narrated.

Our Sisters’ Opportunity (OSO), a non-governmental organisation based in Gakenke District, Northern Province, founded by Delphine Uwamahoro, empowers vulnerable girls and women, like Bayisenge, through vocational training, entrepreneurship, and the creation of sustainable employment.

The targeted beneficiaries are rural girls and women aged 13 to 25 who are school dropouts, teenage mothers, living with disabilities, orphans, or from the lowest economic strata. These vulnerable groups are prioritised because nearly 60 per cent of food-insecure households are led by individuals with low education, single heads of households, or those with disabilities, most often women.

Women with disabilities are more likely to face stigma, are less prioritised for education, and have lower employment rates compared to women without disabilities.

The target was also based on the fact that young Rwandan women from rural areas are more likely to drop out of school than their male peers due to early pregnancy, marriage, and other intersecting issues rooted in social norms that hinder their socioeconomic development.

Approximately 49.6 per cent of teenage mothers in Rwanda have their first pregnancy between the ages of 12 and 17.

According to Uwamahoro Delphine, OSO has established a Creative Design Academy that supports these vulnerable girls and women for now, and the generations to come, as it also addresses the root causes to pave the way for future generations.

"This is because they are less likely to have access to quality education, entrepreneurship skills, dignified and fulfilling employment opportunities. Moreover, educated or not, they have difficulty generating a sustainable income to address their daily basic needs and improve their livelihoods.

"Our programme focuses on providing entrepreneurial vocational training for one year, supporting graduates to start their own businesses, linking them to national and international markets, establishing sustainable jobs for graduates, and providing them with ongoing business mentorship,” she said.

The beneficiaries learn digital fashion, high-end tailoring, agribusiness, soap making, ICT, entrepreneurship, leadership, gender transformation studies, health education, and mindfulness/yoga.

"After graduation, we ensure that they get consistent work contracts to create sustainable jobs and we continue to provide mentorship and business management support to their respective business start-ups. I strongly believe that venturing into local innovations and entrepreneurship will end poverty in Africa,” Uwamahoro said.

"The basic needs we focus on are access to food, clean water, children’s school fees, family health insurance to access healthcare and proper housing,” she explained.

The organisation recently graduated 95 vulnerable young girls and women, awarding Rwf500,000 in startup capital to the top three performers for their outstanding project pitches, while the others received Rwf150,000 each.

"The initiative has directly impacted 1,600 girls and women, most of whom are single mothers and those with disabilities, as well as over 20,000 community members indirectly. We want to reach 10,000 girls and women by 2026. We also plan to build a boarding school in Gakenke for such vulnerable girls and women from all districts in Rwanda,” Uwamahoro said.

She said they plan to achieve this goal by expanding work in all districts and Kigali, which is the capital city of Rwanda.

"This will be possible through the manufacturing ecosystem we are creating, where we will be teaching how to create various products in the textile and agribusiness sector.”

OSO creates generations of women entrepreneurial leaders. "We strongly believe that when girls and women get the opportunity to thrive, they do whatever it takes to address their families’ basic needs and improve their children and communities’ livelihoods. Our mission is to transform community livelihoods by providing girls and women with skills, tools, and resources they need, to create for themselves sustainable jobs in the areas of ethical digital fashion and agribusiness,” she noted.

Goals

OSO’s short-term goals include the graduation of an average of 80 per cent of certified students who successfully attended and passed the OSO one-year course.

The second short-term goal is to kickstart their businesses while staying on the OSO production chain.

The third short-term goal is the consistent monthly income generated which goes towards the graduate’s family’s basic needs, savings, and re-investment in their start-ups.

OSO’s long-term goal focuses on creating decent and sustainable jobs for all OSO graduates so that they are fully equipped to address the basic needs of themselves, their children, and family members. This will lead to ending persistent generational poverty in African communities.

Uwamahoro added: "We envision a world with no poverty, where everyone has an equal opportunity to discover and fulfil their potential.”

A closer look at OSO programmes

OSO has a creative digital design academy with a one-year programme.

The school trains 67 vulnerable girls and women who are selected at the village level based on OSO selection criteria.

During the first six months, OSO transforms them into entrepreneurial leaders. They learn digital fashion, high-end tailoring, agribusiness, ICT, entrepreneurship, leadership, gender transformation studies, health education, and mindfulness/yoga.

Uwamahoro said: "After graduation, we ensure that they get consistent work contracts to create sustainable jobs and we continue to provide mentorship and business management support to their respective business start-ups.”

The school is a safe space for them to self-discover, connect with themselves, build agency, regain energy, and hope to effectively do what they are qualified for, given that they come from very complicated, traumatizing, and socially challenging backgrounds.

In the agribusiness programme, OSO works with women cooperatives and households’ farmers to implement permaculture designs to improve their harvest and conserve the environment.

"Our agronomists train them every other week with hands-on practice in our demonstration plots,” she said.

More than 60 per cent of the grown crops are nutritious crops, she said, explaining: "We ensure that most are consumed by cooperative members’ households first, then we sell others to local markets to generate income. We plan to start processing them to increase nutritious products servings across the country, and to improve financial access among farmers.”

OSO also improves the quality of education by providing materials or hygiene products to students in rural schools so that they can be fully present at school.

"We focus on materials that some rural parents cannot afford because of poverty or cannot consider as a priority because of ignorance. OSO developed a digital Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) Mobile Application for youth to improve the awareness and knowledge of SRHR protocols, support knowledge assessment, and provide legal interventions in case of risky circumstances.” Complemented by other necessary skills, OSO also teaches beneficiaries soap making as a means of generating income.

OSO impact to-date

Under the project dubbed "Creating Women Entrepreneurial Leaders for Lasting Social Change”, the organization has established a first-ever Creative Digital Design Academy, which now graduates 95 students each year and equips them with jobs alongside their business start-ups.

The first cohort graduated in August 2022 and one month later, 15 per cent were hired in Rwanda's textile industry, the rest started their own businesses. With the agribusiness programme, OSO trained 35 women in permaculture design, who also trained 350 households. This programme impacted 2,310 community members.

With OSO School Health Initiative, the organisation distributed school materials to 2,972 children from Ruli Primary School in Gakenke District and Groupe Scolaire de Mwendo in Bugesera District. It also trained them in health education, hygiene, Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights, and COVID-19 prevention during the pandemic.

OSO provided short-term vocational training and business start-up costs to 90 Imporemunyarwanda Artisan Cooperative members. Also, it created jobs for 274 tailors of SOCORWA-Rwanda.

In two years, OSO’s initiative increased their access to market and income by 46 per cent, with a monthly income of $60 to $220 per member.

The OSO School Health Initiative works with adolescent students from the lowest economic strata, aged between 7 to 17 years old. It works with around 3,000 youth every year.

The programme increases the sales of OSO alumni’s products locally and globally through physical and digital e-commerce platforms, as it reduces poverty by increasing incomes and creating jobs.

Bayisenge and other vulnerable young mothers are getting back on track, the fresh graduates are planning to start tailoring projects, thanks to OSO. They have regained their self-confidence and are working hard to achieve economic independence.

Leoncie Tuyizere, another young graduate, said that scaling up the programme to provide financial access for such vulnerable girls to start small projects in areas like ethical fashion and tailoring, agribusiness, and soap production is needed across the country.

"I joined a savings group and opened my bank account so that the savings from my small income-generating activities can help establish my own project/business,” she said and commended Our Sisters’ Opportunity for the comprehensive support.