Students from University of Rwanda dominated the award winning ceremony of the Global Leadership Academic Excellence Awards. The awards that were organised by Victoria University of Wellington were held at the New Zealand Parliament recently. Pierre Sindambiwe, the mentor of the students and a lecturer at the University for the second time, won the Global Leader Academic Excellence Award. He was applauded by the organisers of the contest for turning this challenge into a learning process for his students and deeply valuing the participation of students from the University of Rwanda in the Global Enterprise Experience. “This year, there were 182 Rwandan participants, most of whom were in Sindambiwe’s class. Sindambiwe said: “I think that I achieved my leadership mission to inspire my students. I believe educators can also do more for their students, just not to limit their role on teaching them.” “Students contacted after the contest acknowledged that this is tough exercise but yielding much in terms of knowledge, experience and exposure to the international scene, compared to what they are used to,’’ organisers said in a statement. The students faced tough challenges and some of them caused challenges. We have other impressive academics in this contest inspiring top performance from their students, but none faced the barrage of issues that Pierre faced. Yet through this he continued to work tirelessly, inspire students, rigorously uphold professional expectations, and leave a lasting impact on students and his university,” the statement added. The Rwandan students who participated inspired 14 of their teams to focus their project on Rwanda to find solutions to the problems the country is facing like energy, agriculture, women entrepreneurship and many others. The don’s efforts made the University of Rwanda the most victorious and his students grabbed the highest awards in each categories of this competition. Apart from the Champion Global Leader Academic Excellence Award that was won by Sindambiwe, the different nominations such as the Champion Team Award, Journal Award, Commitment Awards and Champion Social Entrepreneur Award” were all scooped by Rwandan students. In the category of Champion Team Award, Jean de Dieu Irankunda won with a project “ Hives for Humanity“, an urban beekeeping scheme for homeless in South Africa. In the category of Journal Award, Samson Bisanukuri out-competed all eight hundred participants. In the category of Commitment Awards, Silvie Inkindi won the title. Her team’s business was a craft venture for the widows and elderly women in Rwanda. Lastly, Moses Asiimwe was awarded Champion Social Entrepreneur Award as a result of a retrospective impact assessment searching through the past graduates to find an exemplar who has applied social entrepreneurship skills to create a better world. Asiimwe has also undertaken numerous voluntary roles alongside colleagues; he set up Young Voice Africa – a youth mentoring and capacity building organisation that has impacted the lives of many youth in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. It was awarded the Top 50 Most Innovative Start Ups by the New York Forum Institute. He also adapted his team’s Global Enterprise Experience project from 2015 to enable girls to make their own sanitary pads. All participants are eligible for different awards and each member of a winning team as well as winning Journal gets a monetary award equivalent to $ 700 each. The award giving ceremony takes place every year at the New Zealand Parliament. It is organised by Victoria University of Wellington in collaboration with UNESCO, among other partners. The competition attracts hundreds of students with a total of 888 participants from 93 countries from all continents with the objective of mixing students for them to learn from one another. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
