First Lady wins Global Leader award

First Lady Jeannette Kagame, yesterday, received the Outstanding Global Leader award by Women Inspiration and Enterprise (WIE) a global movement conference and community for women. She received the award in recognition of her contribution to promoting the rights of women and girls, at a ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa. The Women Inspiration Enterprise aims at inspiring and empowering the next generation of women leaders and advocates as well as building a powerful and influential female network for change and transformation. Vincent Karega, Rwanda’s High Commissioner to South Africa, who received the award on behalf of Mrs Kagame, told The New Times that the award was in recognition of her high level commitment to helping poor women, supporting orphans and giving scholarships to students who perform well in school. He added it was due to the First Lady’s “outstanding programmes that are voluntary and enriching lives through promoting the rights of women and girls in particular. “She also played a role in the campaigns creating awareness among girls about sugar daddies,” Karega said.Karega said the First Lady has also helped in implementing prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV programmes among other activities to improve people’s livelihoods, thus making her the first First Lady to receive the global award. Mrs Kagame has championed many projects that support women and girls through Imbuto Foundation. The Foundation has so far provided education scholarships to over 6,000 students, and rewarded at least 5,000 girls for outstanding performance in national exams, for the last 10 years. The organisation also provides direct support to 218,500 beneficiaries, with 200,000 of them receiving community health insurance, commonly known as Mutuelle de Sante. Imbuto Foundation has also helped around 355 vulnerable families set up income-generating activities to improve their livelihoods and get out of poverty.The award also considered Mrs Kagame’s livestock and financial support to poor women care takers of orphans (malaika murinzi) and youth leadership programmes. The WIE network is made of Active current and former first ladies, Women CEOs, philanthropists, celebrities, policy makers and women advocates of women empowerment. The event was graced by Grace Machel, the wife of iconic former South African president Nelson Mandela, ministers, business and civil society women of vision and impact. WIE is a global annual conference and online community designed to empower the next generation of women leaders that was founded in 2010.

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First Lady wins Global Leader award