Youth join literacy activities in Kayonza on Sept. 29.

We’re happy to report a great turnout for our Rwanda Reads event at our Kayonza YEGO Youth Centre Library on Sept. 29.

Grace Rwanda sponsored a literacy event in the town and supplied book bags as prizes to encourage young student readers as they participated in literacy activities.

We’re happy to be a part of building literacy capacity in Rwanda and creating a culture of reading!

In other news, two students here at home at UBC have joined Grace Rwanda as interns.

Silvana Romero and Aiman Ragab are motivating their fellow university students to donate books to Grace Rwanda’s upcoming shipment of books to Rwanda, with the goal of stocking two new youth libraries in the country.

The shipment is set to go out later this fall. Romero and Ragab are leading book drives on campus and fundraising for our latest project. We appreciate their enthusiasm and effort! Check out their campaign on Toonies4Change.org in the coming month.

Co-founder Elizabeth Johnson and President Paul Johnson were also in Kelowna recently speaking at the Calvary Chapel. They were met with heartfelt support for their mission and goal of setting up a Grace Rwanda office in Kigali this fall and stocking the new libraries with books.

The deadline is looming, so if you have books to donate or can pledge financial assistance to make this shipment a reality, please contact us at info@gracerwanda.org.

You can get regular updates on our work by following @GraceRwanda, liking us on Facebook, adding us in your Google+ circle, and watching our videos on YouTube.

Big news! This month students at two of B.C.’s biggest universities are rallying in support of Grace Rwanda and our life-changing youth literacy and library programs.

We are honoured that the students from two African Student Societies, the UBC African Awareness Initiative and SFU’s African Students’ Association, are joining forces to run a fundraising competition, with the proceeds going to benefit our work improving literacy in Rwanda. All funds collected will be dedicated to purchasing books and e-readers and other literacy materials for our third YEGO youth centre community library, which we plan to set up this spring.

Their fundraising effort, called The Giving Competition, starts February 1 and runs until February 28. The students will vie to see which university can raise the most funds by the end of the month. You can support their initiative by donating to your favourite team or your old alma mater. Contributions can easily be made online through the Donate page of our website at GraceRwanda.org.

To learn more, you can watch a short video about the event.

The UBC African Awareness Initiative (AAI) is committed to improving discourse surrounding and including Africa at the university. They aim to produce outstanding academic forums to encourage critical discussions pertaining to the relevance of the African continent, the Diaspora and its globalization. Their mission is to educate the public about how much Africa has to give to the world. To do so, the group hosts events featuring world-class African scholars, writers, artists and activists representative of the high standard of knowledge being produced about Africa. Read more about AAI’s work on their web site, Ubcaai.org, or their Facebook page, or contact one of their members at aai.vpfinance@gmail.com.

Simon Fraser University’s African Students’ Association (ASA) was founded to engage the interests, voice and issues of African students at Simon Fraser University. They are dedicated to promoting African culture and highlighting the importance of Africa’s historical, political, social and economic issues. The ASA strives to strengthen and promote African presence at SFU and educate the general student body about the true diversity of the continent. Learn more about the African Students’ Association on their Facebook page or contact one of their members at afra.sfu@gmail.com.

We’d like to offer our sincere thanks to these inspiring student leaders for choosing to make Grace Rwanda the beneficiary of their charity competition, and encourage you to get involved. And may the best team win!

You can get regular updates on our work by following @GraceRwanda, liking us on Facebook, adding us in your Google+ circle, and watching our videos on YouTube.

Grace Rwanda co-founder Elizabeth Johnson will be sharing her lessons in leadership with B.C. youth this month. Johnson is due to speak to youth in Rotary International‘s Youth Adventure in Leadership program, which runs from Jan. 17-19th. She discusses the powerful leadership lessons to be learned from forgiveness in a talk titled, “The Power of Forgiveness.”

Later in the month, Grace Rwanda will be a featured participant in Missions Fest Vancouver, a Christian-focussed conference for organizations working on international aid and missions abroad. The event is being held  downtown at the Vancouver Convention Centre from Jan. 24-26th. We will be manning a booth there and hope to outreach and share our cause with other participants and like-minded non-profits. Johnson has also been asked to give a presentation to attendees Friday afternoon.

Grace Rwanda’s Missions Fest participation has been made possible by the generous support of Jan and Ray Martyn (pictured above.) The couple visited Rwanda on our distribution trip last summer and were inspired by our work in the field. They are sponsoring our conference fees and we’d like to extend our sincere thanks for their support.

Lastly, Grace Rwanda will be attending UBC‘s International Development Research Network on Jan. 30th to liaise with staff and work on partnerships.

It’s a busy month of events and presentations, but we are always happy to spread the word about Grace Rwanda’s work. If you know of an organization, school, community group, or business we should connect with email info@gracerwanda.org.

You can get regular updates by following @GraceRwanda, liking us on Facebook, adding us in your Google+ circle, and watching our videos on YouTube.