The Ministry of Education and stakeholders have been called upon to devise more strategies aimed at promoting a community cohesion agenda in the sector.The call was made on Thursday during a two-day workshop on social studies for community cohesion and sustainable development that was organised by Kigali Institute of Education (KIE).In an interview with The New Times, Jean Leonard Buhigiro, a lecturer at KIE, who heads the Education for Community Cohesion Project, underlined the need for all educationists in the country to play a key role in enhancing community social cohesion.“KIE is mandated to prepare tomorrow’s teachers. We organised this workshop to analyse how social studies can be effectively used to promote community cohesion and sustainable development in the country because no nation can achieve sustainable development without community cohesion.” He said KIE, in partnership with the United Kingdom’s Nottingham University, established the project four years ago when genocide ideology cases were prevalent in many schools. Buhigiro said KIE and Nottingham University, which offers holocaust programmes in its curriculum, share information and skills on combating the genocide ideology and promoting community cohesion.He added that, one of the major challenges that still hinder community cohesion is over population and underscored the need to carry on sensitising the population on family planning.He further cited environmental degradation as another factor,, arguing that Rwandans should be sensitised on environmental protection strategies especially through planting more trees.
