What are we doing?

Friday June 6^{th ish}

Steph and I spent a large part of our day wondering if what we are doing here is going to make a difference. Not even make “a difference” but have any sort of impact at all. It is hard for us to fully understand the structure of Never Again Rwanda (NAR) and their Youth Clubs (YC), but we are trying to get a handle of it. Our understanding the dynamic of NAR and the YC is imperative if we are to be successful in our work here.

We were kind of freaking out about it in the early part of the day. Thinking if NAR is so unorganized, and it seems that there is a rather large disconnect between NAR and the YC, how effective will our creation of a Human Rights curriculum actually be. Perhaps our time would be better spent focusing on a different task.

We spoke with the two other interns who are here from Holland about the YC and NAR. After a decently long conversation it seemed as though our perceptions were right. They have been here for five weeks and it seems as though they still do not have a completely comprehend the relationship between the YC and NAR.

A little background: It seems as though there are 30 YC throughout Rwanda, although every person we ask we get a different response from, and although they are all “a part” of NAR they really aren’t. It seems as though the clubs do not get much support from NAR, nor are the clubs truly linked. We need to figure out what the level of education/understanding is of the kids in the clubs so that we can better structure our curriculum to fit their needs.

We finally met with Dr. Joseph, the man who we were speaking with before we came to Rwanda, and we asked him a lot of questions. He gave us some insight into the YC, their ages, learning level etc. which helped us out a lot.

After the conversation we started to feel a little better about ourselves and our work here. We are reminded that it is very important that we visit the YC and we make a mental note to make sure we speak with whomever we need to, to see that we accomplish that mission.

We start to work on the curriculum and outline what we want/need to put in it. Like I said earlier, we are going to be making two different versions of the curriculum/guide so we have to think a little differently for both but it shouldn’t be too hard. The other idea we had was to create another two versions, one for secondary schools or kids of that age and another for use in the universities. Our plan is to create a document that can be read by both age groups easily and if there is time add in some more complex/in depth information for the university level.

Once we started working we were on a role, banging out ideas. Too bad it was 5:15 by the time we got a jolt of creativity because we had to leave shortly after. We hope our drive will stay with us the remaining time we have here in Rwanda.