Fact Rwanda will carry out a country-wide campaign against gender-based violence and educating secondary students on human rights through its 131 school clubs. Davis Gashaka Karegeya, president of the organisation in the Great Lakes Region revealed this on recently at Ecole des sciences de Gisenyi ESG in a function bringing together nine secondary schools from Gisenyi to participate in music and drama competition aimed at educating the youth on human rights and gender violence “The target groups are students in secondary schools. We are trying to educate and sensitize them on issues of sexual and gender violence. We could achieve this at a very first rate through creating human rights clubs in secondary schools all over the country,” Karegeya said. Through funds from Dutch agency ECCO, Fact Rwanda has formed 131 clubs and has a total of 300 human-right clubs country-wide. “We bring students together to compete amongst each other to show how they could go back into the communities to teach their parents and members of the community on gender issues and human rights in general,” Karegeya said. “This can greatly help in reducing sexual and gender-based violences.” The organization targets youth as they currently represent the biggest percentage of the country population. According to Uwomukiza Josephine, a senior-five student from ESG, such sensitizations through music dance and drama are very important to students since it contained edutainment. “I both enjoy and learn a lot from such music, dance, and drama competitions. I have learned much on human-rights and gender violence, which are a common phenomenon in our societies. Such organization helps us to unite, come together and learn from each other,” she said.Ends
