More than 15,000 vulnerable people including patients received much needed support such as food, while 2,000 dropout children returned to school, and 641 needy students were paid school fees, as part of the Pentecostal Church of Rwanda (ADEPR)’s over Rwf40 billion social-economic transformation initiatives in 2022, the Church leadership said.

On March 26, in Kigali, ADEPR held its Partnership Celebration event – an opportunity for the Church to celebrate with its partners the achievements of last year and discuss the efforts made towards transforming the lives of the Rwandan community holistically.

Speaking at the event, the Senior Pastor of ADEPR Church Pastor, Isaie Ndayizeye, said that the Church's vision is to transform the lives of people in a holistic way through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that "what is most important is that I see, on a daily basis, accomplishments that lead to the achievement of holistic impact.”

He said that all the socio-economic initiatives that the Church implemented last year, amount to over Rwf40 billion in value.

Overall, he said, ADEPR has 2.8 million followers currently.

Among other achievements by the Church and its partners last year, Ndayizeye said that there is 119,268 new believers, including 374 who were under character reformation at Iwawa Rehabilitation and Vocational Skills Development Centre located in Western Province, and Nyamagabe Rehabilitation Centre in the Southern Province.

Also, he said that over 12,000 street children were taken from the streets and got rid of drugs to which they were addicted, as a result of the evangelisation intended to tackle those issues.

"This country needs intelligent and wise people so that we reach where we want to be,” he said, underscoring the need to tackle drugs.

Economic empowerment

In line with economic empowerment, Ndayizeye said the Church encourages people to make savings and run income-generating businesses.

To that end, he indicated that there are more than 6,000 savings and credit groups which are well-established, and started engaging in income-generating projects through their savings. They have over 128,000 members.

"They meet every week for prayer, but also save money and discuss how they can develop economically. They started small projects, some are doing small trade. They so far have over 1.272 billion in savings,” he said.

For the last year alone, he said that over 1,297 groups were created, with more than 28,000 members who saved over Rwf360 million in one year.

Welfare improvement

Regarding improving people’s welfare, and taking care of vulnerable Rwandans, Ndayizeye said that last year, the Church in collaboration with its partners paid contribution to the community-based health insurance — Mutuelle de Santé — for over 73,000 people (equivalent to Rwf219 million), so that they are able to get health services.

"We thank God for that because when we support those people, we are taking care of their health,” Ndayizeye said.

ADEPR, and its partners, he added, continued to help the vulnerable to meet their basic necessities, whereby last year, they provided support worth over Rwf1.5 billion to the vulnerable people including patients at hospitals.

"This helped over 15,000 people countrywide,” he said, indicating that the interventions included providing food to patients admitted to hospitals but cannot afford it, and that the Church will continue to offer such support.

Again, he said that the Church backed Rwanda’s Girinka one cow per poor family programme with 743 cows given to needy families, Ndayizeye said, adding that it also provided 32,519 small livestock animals to needy people.

Moreover, he said, the Church built houses for 370 people, and renovated houses for 796 others, as well as contributed more than Rwf121 million to Rwanda’s school feeding programme.

"We commend this good decision that the leadership of the country took because we also know that when children study while hungry, their learning performance gets low,” he observed.

The Chief Executive Officer of Rwanda Governance Board (RGB), Usta Kaitesi, said the abovementioned event served to ensure transparency and accountability, to show that the Church was putting to good use the resources it got from its members and partners.

Talking about the major achievements that ADEPR realised that are impactful to Rwandans, she said "the first is over 2,000 dropout children who were helped to go back to school implies taking care of the future of our country’s workforce. Second, it is the 76 new schools that were constructed, because we chose to build a competent Rwandan able to be competitive at international level.”

"Third, it is the economic activities, including instilling the savings culture into people, and expanding Gospel preaching to farmers on the farm.”

The Country Director at Compassion International, John Nkubana, who spoke on behalf of ADEPR partners, said the Church accounts for a quarter – about 25 per cent – of the 438 projects under implementation by various faith-based organisations countrywide, suggesting that its good performance is critical for them to achieve the intended results.

"ADEPR’s current team is, first, intelligent; second it is development-oriented and understands the development concept. They are very good partners,” he said.

"What we want is family development, and getting children rid of the poverty trap. If we continue to partner with ADEPR and we do the necessary, we hope that we will achieve that,” he observed.

Going forward, Ndayizeye said that "fighting stunting and malnutrition among children is among the issues to which we attach top priority.”