Closure of Nyundo Orphanage due

The National Commission for Children has assigned Hope and Homes for Children, an international NGO, to prepare children at the Noel Orphanage Centre in Nyundo, Rubavu District, for placement in foster families.Nyundo orphanage is one of the biggest orphanages in the country, with over 450 dependants, most of them mature, having completed their studies. The NGO will provide technical and financial support, including identifying parents who are willing to adopt the children as plans to close the decades-old centre run by Nyundo Catholic Diocese are underway. The technical team will prepare children and families that would accept to take up the children, while local leaders will be trained to follow up on the children in their respective foster families.“We have the go-ahead from Nyundo Diocese and an agreement with Hope and Homes for Children to empower local leaders to skillfully place children in homes. Children deserve the right to family love. They are not begging any one. It’s their right,” Zaina Nyiramatama, the Executive Secretary to the National Commission for Children said.She explained that Hope and Homes for Children is their partner in the effort of phasing out orphanages and ensuring that all children are brought up in a family set-up.Jean Marie Vianney Nsengumuremyi, the Vicar General of Nyundo Diocese, promised to support the programme, saying they just lacked the ability but not the will to place the children in families.“This is what we used to do before the Genocide against Tutsi and the subsequent incursions of Genocidaires from DRC that killed families making it difficult for us.The original vision by the late Bishop Bigirumwami was to rescue children whose mothers died giving birth and later hand them over to their families after three years,” said Nsengumuremyi.He said that the system initially worked well, but after the Genocide, even the government brought them children; “because of our excellent performance in orphanage management, but with no technical and financial ability to place children in foster or biological families”. The world president for the NGO, Delia Popp, said their success was rooted in the organisation’s holistic approach to child development through empowering local leaders and needy families to prevent issues that lead to separation of children from their families.“Our success is based on the approach where local leaders and experts work together to promote and protect the child’s interest,” she said, adding that their success will be tested depending on how the children will adapt to the new family setup.Popp introduced the team supposed to implement the programme and promised they would begin to build the institution’s capacity to prevent factors that separate children from their families. The National Commission for Children was tasked to have closed all the 34 orphanages in the country by 2014 and presently, only two have been closed. Noel Orphanage has 189 children, 254 of them youth (18+) and 14 others with mental disabilities.