The AMAHORO Association
Kasabo District, Kucyiru Sector, Kigali, Rwanda
AMAHORO (“Peace”) Association is a model for young leaders supporting children made vulnerable because of HIV/AIDS. Their work has been recognized by high officials in the Rwandan and Burundian governments. The leaders help young persons in other places who want to start associations to help children like AMAHORO.
The AMAHORO Association began on April 30th, 2000 as 14 young men and women who themselves had been orphaned by AIDS wanted to advocate for children who were being stigmatized and discriminated against because of HIV/AIDS in their families.
They brought together children with similar problems to provide a venue for learning and fun. They still have weekly gatherings and life skills workshops to teach about HIV prevention, community-building, the dangers of drugs and prostitution, hygiene, children’s rights, and many other matters parents normally talk with their children about.
Since 2004, CHABHA has supported AMAHORO, and, as a result, children go to primary and secondary school; they have health cards; the leaders make home visits to assess family well-being; they encourage skill building and economic independence; they provide food for the most vulnerable; they have weekly gatherings with dancers like these girls; they use music to confront their problems and issues; and they have a sense of belonging to something valuable.
Now the AMAHORO Association counts more than 2500 orphaned children. Many families are headed by young people from 16 to 20; some are living with one parent who is HIV+; others live with another adult relative. 5.5% of those who have been tested are HIV+.
AMAHORO leaders take part in capacity building workshops and training, thanks to a grant from the Global Fund for Children which also supports many children in primary school, emergency food, and home visits.
Here are AMAHORO youth preparing for a Life Skills Weekend.
The AMAHORO Association and CHABHA-Rwanda have a dream. Because there is no reliable space for the weekly gatherings and because their only office space is very small, the dream is for IWACO, “A Place of Our Own.” CHABHA seeks financial support to purchase land, if necessary, and to buy or rent a building to be office space, a classroom for young members of AMAHORO who are not yet in school and who have great needs, a multipurpose room for Life Skills workshops, and a kitchen for micro-enterprise work.
AMAHORO Community-Building Effort
In Rwanda, everyone is expected to spend the morning of the last Saturday of every month doing community work — such as picking up trash. Richard Mutabazi, Director, CHABHA-Rwanda, and the AMAHORO leaders decided to have the AMAHORO children do their own community work. In April, they worked to make bricks for a kitchen for one of their families, a woman (HIV+) and her three children. There must have been 125 – 150 AMAHORO children working, carrying water from a brook below, digging mud, squishing mud with bare feet, hand over hand carrying blocks of wet mud to put into frames to dry to make bricks. It will take them several more days to complete the kitchen. Though they have great needs, the children are learning that they, too, are able to help others.
