Komera Scholar Program

We are committed to addressing the gender disparity in education for young women in Rwanda. By providing the resources they need to attend school (tuition, supplies, boarding items), we remove the barrier of access. By providing mentoring for our scholars and families, we remove feelings of resentment or loneliness. By providing their parents with lessons and business training, we remove the burden of supporting the family. By providing leadership training and transition lessons, we remove any gaps they may have in their education. Globally, women are often overlooked as a priority to receive education. Our solution provides a space for our scholars to be unburdened by issues of access, unhappiness, or misplaced responsibility. We provide them with education, mentorship, business/ICT trainings, health lessons, and advocacy to give them a space where they feel supported and encouraged to learn and grow. Scaled internationally, this solution could transform gendered power dynamics.

We believe limiting a female's access to knowledge is limiting society as a whole. In our community in Rwanda, women face extreme pressure to support their families at home, participate in early marriage, and stay within the confines of what cultural stigmas assume women to be. The gender disparities often favor young men and don't prioritize education for women when there are duties for them in the home. According to the 2012 census, the population of the Kayonza district where we work is 344,157 and in Rwanda, women make up 51.8% of the population. That's about 178,962 women, young women, and girls in just one community that would be impacted by our solution. By removing barriers of access, familial pressure, and stigma, our solution is able to empower our scholars by providing them with an education while also providing their families with resources and trainings to empower themselves and break the cycles of poverty. By identifying the young women and families who are most at need and transforming their narratives, we can continue to break down barriers and create authentic community lift. 

We provide comprehensive scholarships to young women in Rwanda, including tuition fees, transportation fees, boarding fees, boarding items, and school supplies. We use in-school mentors to ensure our scholars feel heard and supported while away from home. We provide business training and access to the Parent and Guardian Cooperative to parents so they can be economically empowered and support themselves and other family members. We utilize school breaks to provide additional education and trainings in ICT, sexual and reproductive health, hygiene, prevention of early pregnancies, goal setting, business skills, leadership, career guidance, and training to become social change agents. The combination of these pillars provide an in-depth education as well as a full network of support for young female scholars.

Our solution targets young women who, without our support, wouldn't have the opportunity to continue their education. Our team in Rwanda conducts an application process at the beginning of each year including an application, a needs assessment, and extensive interviews with the young woman and her family. Our team and mentors are actively engaged with the young scholars through this process and once they've been selected as scholars to ensure we're meeting all their needs. With insight from our mentors and social worker manager, we're able to adjust our programming and solution to better meet our scholars' needs. We use feedback to create dynamic programs and solutions to provide these young women and their families with resources and education. 

The problem is that young women are often held back by existing power dynamics. One way young women are limited is by refusing to prioritize their education. We want to educate more women and girls and give them access to formal education, as well as additional curriculum to help build on their knowledge and grow their capacities. By targeting young women in rural Rwanda, our solution helps to battle existing cultural barriers and barriers of access to get more women and girls in school. 

Our solution goes beyond just providing a scholarship. By ensuring young women have support in schools through our school-based mentors and support at home from their families, we know that she has the ability to thrive in a nurturing environment. A scholarship alone is a bandaid on a gushing wound. We add in additional education opportunities so our young scholars can learn leadership skills, business skills, ICT skills, and important health lessons in addition to the lessons they receive at school. With this holistic model, we are providing them with the skills they need to succeed beyond school.

We require very simple technology. Our social worker manager and team rely on WhatsApp to communicate with our scholars and mentors. We use laptops for ICT training. We use Skype/Zoom to conduct team meetings with our US and Rwanda team and to facilitate interactions with our scholars and their sponsors.

With an international team, our communication relies on technology like WhatsApp and Zoom. WhatsApp is a very common application for people who travel internationally that allows users to communicate online using their phone number. It's also encrypted to keep the information safe. Zoom has recently become one of the most popular video call applications during times of quarantine and social distancing. It can be used for video calling and screen sharing. 

The challenge: Young women face a variety of challenges worldwide, one often being limited access to education. 

Our activities and goals: By providing scholarships, supplies, and fees, we want to remove the barrier of access. By providing mentorship, we want each girl to feel like she's able to achieve her full potential because she is fully supported. By supporting her family, we want to break cycles of poverty and provide a stable and supportive home for our young scholars to return to. 

The anticipated change: Transforming community narratives by creating community lift through education and economic empowerment for women and girls. We use education as an access point to support young women in all aspects of their lives.

This year, we have 76 young women enrolled in partner secondary schools, 66 scholars in Rwandan universities. We've had 117 secondary school graduates since 2011 and 13 university graduates since 2015 with 10 of those scholars graduating in 2019. Each year, we invite 25 new scholars to join our secondary scholar program and use a combination of government grants and Komera scholarships to support scholars who choose to continue on to university. We hope to continue a steady increase in the number of scholars in universities and plan to stay consistent in inviting 25 new secondary scholars to join the program each year. 

Our goal within the next year is to ensure our young women have the support they need to survive the nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19 and that they have access to educational opportunities while schools are on break. Within the next five years, we hope to build a leadership center - the first home for Komera - that will provide a space for additional education services, including early childhood education, and will be open to the entire community. We hope our model of comprehensive education and support will be an example for other organizations that try to advance access to education through traditional sponsorship or scholarship programs that only provide tuition fees and not a network of support. 

One of the current barriers we face are, obviously, financial. If nonprofits had all the money in the world, there still wouldn't be enough to fund our big dreams. We want to be in a financial position to provide support to any young women in our community that want to advance their education. An additional barrier we face falls in hand with the current lockdowns due to COVID-19. While girls are home and away from school, many are facing domestic violence, being married away, or used for labor at home. Their chances of being able to return to school become less and less the longer they're away from school, so we want to ensure none of the young women in our community get left behind. 

1. Funding: Our plan to overcome this barrier, especially now during the precarious times of COVID-19 and social injustice, we plan to create budgets that prioritize our necessary programs and ensure education remains a prime concern. Applying for grants and appealing to scholar sponsors or individual donors will remain in our fundraising strategy to make certain this program has the funding it needs to survive. 

2. Unique circumstances around COVID-19: We've been addressing this barrier by remaining in constant communication with our scholars and families through our social worker manager and community mentors. We've already had two instances where our team had to step in to protect one of our young scholars. When school resumes, we will have to be diligent in following up with our scholars and confirming they've all returned to school. 

Our staff consists of 3 support staff in the US, 9 full time programatic staff members in Rwanda, and nearly 20 part-time staff and contractors that help us with education, mentorship, additional lessons, and general support. 

Our team has been working on this project as it's evolved into the solution it is now for the past decade. They are brilliant, dynamic leaders and all Rwandan females who understand the intricacies of their culture, education, and government systems. Their experience lends itself well to them being the best positioned to help address the inequalities in Rwanda education. Three of our staff members (Vestine - Program Administrator, Justine - Assistant Accountant, and Scovia - Administrative Assistant) are previous Komera Scholar graduates that now work full time on our team. 

We have numerous funding partners to whom we are incredibly grateful. A few specific ones that apply to this solution are:

Amplify - a collective of 18 organizations in East Africa that implement diverse programs to serve adolescent girls

Tailored for Education - providing school uniforms for students 

Project Able - advancing educational opportunities, most recently providing funding to build a science lab at one of our partner schools

Arthur B Schultz Foundation - supporting our supplemental education and scholar programs  

Newman's Own Foundation - providing funds for our scholar program

We provide our beneficiaries with programs that help advance their education and support their overall wellbeing. These programs are carried out by a staff of local leaders in partnership with local governments and schools. Our beneficiaries apply to our programs, so they are young women and scholars who desire to continue their education, but lack the resources to do so. We provide resources and access to educational programs and opportunities for them to unlock their full potential. 

Our financial sustainability relies on our core individual donors, grantors, and partners, as well as a fundraising strategy that prioritizes stewardship alongside research into new potential funders. Our event strategies and fundraising efforts over the years have helped us reach a place of stability. 

I believe Solve has a unique ability to help creative problem solvers remove barriers to access for young women and girls who are eager to receive an education. This funding opportunity allows us to be innovative while surrounded by a community that encourages creativity and innovation. In addition, support through mentorship and strategic advice will help us perfect our solution as a model for sustainable, supportive scholarships globally. 

We would love to learn more about how to use this solution to create a successful and sustainable business model. In addition, we want to learn how we can develop a funding model to ensure this solution is sustainable for the future. As we continue to grow and globalize, the importance of technology becomes more important. Our solution requires very little technology at the present moment, but we are interested in how technology can advance our solution and make education even more accessible for young women in our communities. 

We would be open to partnership opportunities with anyone who can help in additional trainings and supplemental education curriculum, business and structural support, opportunities for technological growth and advancement, and funding partnerships. 

We are qualified for The GM Prize on Learning for Girls because we encourage, as well as provide, access to learning opportunities and formal education for young girls and women in Rwanda where women's education is not a cultural priority and poverty often creates a barrier for young scholars. We would use the funding from this prize to support our comprehensive scholarships and webs of support, including tuition support, boarding and school materials, supplemental training and lessons, mentorship, and parent business support.