Elizabeth Johnson shows some of the books donated to Rwandan librarians recently trained in Kigali.

Just a few months after arriving in Rwanda to focus more on local operations, Grace Rwanda’s leaders are already in the news.

Elizabeth Johnson was celebrated for her literacy promotion work with Grace Rwanda in a feature story in Rwanda’s The New Times newspaper the other day. The paper is the leading English-language daily in the country.

The piece, titled, “Empowering community-based librarians to serve,” focused on a recent workshop to train librarians held at Kigali Public Library. The librarians, brought in from all over the country, were trained in library management, cataloguing, book recording, and filing to improve their skills. The Rwandan government has made increasing literacy in the country a priority.

Grace Rwanda believes that educating librarians is a great step to empowering Rwandans to foster greater literacy among youth. To that end, our organization donated 150 dictionaries to the librarians to support their literacy efforts, and our efforts were noted in the article.

Here’s an excerpt of what else the news story had to say about us:

Elizabeth Mujawamariya-Johnson attended the workshop in her capacity as a member of the Rwandan diaspora working in international development. She recently returned with her husband from Canada for permanent stay in Rwanda.

While still in Canada, she had initiated an organization called Grace Rwanda Society based in Langley, British Columbia in Canada. 

In 2014, she decided to create a sister organization that would act as a local NGO, hence the birth of Ineza Foundation. 

“In January I moved to Rwanda full-time with my husband to kind of increase our capacity so we can open the office and be able to assemble an operational team here for Ineza Foundation so they can be the ones to implement all the projects for Grace Rwanda Society,” Mujawamariya-Johnson explained. 

The foundation recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Youth and ICT to equip 21 community libraries across the country under their respective district youth centers. 

The first two beneficiaries were; Muhanga Youth Center in Muhanga district, Southern Province, and Kayonza Youth Center in Kayonza district, Eastern Province, which were equipped with books, computers and e-readers. 

Read more of the article on The New Times web site. And check back for more updates from the field as we continue to ramp up our youth literacy work in Rwanda.

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