Monday - Les Enfants de Dieu

Joe and I were extremely impressed and amazed at the work that is being done at Les Enfants de Dieu, and especially at the way that they are training up their children to be leaders of integrity and character. It was such a different way of doing things that I am going to take time in this post to explain it in detail because we have never seen anything like it. We were visiting the center for boys today, but Rafiki (Project Manager) told us there is a similar center for girls as well.

Les Enfants de Dieu was founded by a Canadien businessman in 2002 to try to help feed the street children of Kigali. At first, it was a way to invite them for lunch at the soap factory that he owned, but it bothered him that no one was feeding them breakfast or dinner; that they didn’t have a dry place to sleep during the rainy season; that there was no one to care for these little children (some as young as 7 years old) when they were sick. So he purchased 4 hectors of land and began a home for 60 street kids, with just 3 employees doing everything. They were the teachers, managers, cooks, night watchmen, etc.

The task was daunting, and by 2004, with 96 children at the center, they knew that they needed to expand the project so that the children would do more than just eat, play and sleep. They also knew that they needed to begin to develop projects so that eventually (many years in the future), it could become self-sufficient. That is when they hired a project manager and began contacting schools to try to enroll these kids into school. Most of the schools would not even consider accepting the street kids, because they were worried about the negative influence the street kids would have on the rest of the student population. However, Rafiki found a school with a compassionate headmistress who was willing to try with 50 students. She was stunned by the success of this. Within a short period of time, they began to realize how committed these students were to succeed. Most of them were at the top of their class, and the teachers had never seen such responsible, self-disciplined, mature students. Now, there are 130 children in primary and secondary schools.


This is the fish and rabbit farm, which is
one of the projects that has been started
to help them become self-sustaining

Rafiki has spent 19 years working with vulnerable children, 7 of those years reaching out to street kids, and 3 of those years learning their language, gaining their trust, finding out about the things that were important to them. There were challenges facing the center as some of the kids were becoming disillusioned about the way that things worked at the center, and Rafiki decided that it was time to empower these boys to have a voice in the decisions that needed to be made.

In 2006, they developed 5 individual ministries to oversee the workings of the center, and the kids elected a Minister from among themselves to be in charge of each area. So in 2006, the first Minister of Administration, Minister of Health, Minister of Sports and Culture, Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Education were elected. These Ministers were all boys (at the center for boys), mostly ranging in ages from 15-17 years old. Each of these Ministers then appointed a Director General and three Technicians (these were also boys) to work with them to help oversee their areas, and they were empowered to oversee the staff.

As you can imagine, this created a bit of conflict with the staff, who objected to having to answer to children. But as Rafiki pointed out to his staff, the donations were coming in for the children; if the children refused to stay at the center, the donations would stop coming in. Therefore, the children should have a voice, and in essence, they were the boss of the staff. At first, the children didn’t really believe they were being empowered, but as Rafiki trained them as leaders and helped them to take their responsibilities seriously, they began to see how important their roles were. In essence, these boys were trained to be government leaders, and they oversaw every area of the center. This program has been highly successful in giving the boys ownership in their home and in their care. It has become an amazing empowerment experience.

Joe and I had the opportunity to meet with the Ministers (again, remember that they range in age from 15 to 17 years old) during our time at Les Enfants. We learned that in 2007, they added 2 more Ministers: the Minister of Social Affairs and the Minister of Home Affairs. At the beginning of each year, each of the Ministers meet with their General Secretary and Technicians to come up with an action plan for their areas for the coming year, and then they meet together as a cabinet to discuss each ministry’s plan. Five of the seven ministries must agree to each plan in order for it to be accepted. So for example, in 2007, the Minister of Social Affairs (oversees the re-integration program to help the boys to go back to their families when possible or to become independent when they finish their vocational training) decided that they needed to get a car for the center because relying on taxis was too expensive and too unreliable in the event of an emergency. He worked together with his team to come up with a plan to raise the necessary funds. Imagine how proud the staff was when, by the end of the year, they had been able to raise enough funds to purchase a very old, used pickup truck. The Minister of Health felt that they needed to have an infirmary so that when any of the boys were sick, there would not only be a place to seek treatment, but also a place for them to sleep and to stay separated from the other boys so the others wouldn’t be infected by the same illness. The infirmary is now being built!

When Rafiki approached the Minister of Administration to tell him that he really needed a computer to track all the information that he needed to take care of, he was denied permission to purchase the computer. That’s because all the Ministers met together, reviewed the budget, and determined that although there was a need for the computer, food was a much higher priority, and at that time, the budget was too low to provide enough food and to purchase a computer. Now that’s empowerment, when they have the right to say “no” to the person who oversees the entire center!

Each year, in December, the kids begin to campaign to be elected to their ministry position (much like our elections coming up). Those who are going into secondary school are not eligible to run because they will be away at boarding school, so this opens up some of the positions at the end of each year for other primary students to seek office. There is no salary involved in this, and it requires a great deal of work and time and responsibility, yet these boys campaign hard to be elected to these posts. Amazing!!!!

While we were these Ministers, some of them shared their stories of what their life had been like on the street, and what a life-changing difference the center has made for each of them. Most of them were genocide orphans or children whose families were in such dire poverty, they could no longer live with their families. One of them told us that he had lost both parents during the genocide, and had been living with a foster family since he was 3 years old. Because they couldn’t afford to feed him or send him to school, they kicked him out a number of years ago and he became a street kid. Now that he was living at the center, he has been able to go to school, and at 16 years old, he is now in P3 (Primary 3 is the equivalent of our third grade).

Many of these boys had been addicted to sniffing glue while on the streets, and most of them felt the trauma of loss, abandonment and rejection. The challenges they faced were monumental. Yet now, they are filled with a vision for becoming great men; men who will become leaders and who will make a profound difference in their country.

These boys go back to the streets now, to recruit other street children to come to the center so that they, too, can experience hope for a future. The only requirement for street children to enroll in the center is that they must find their own means to get to the center. If they demonstrate their willingness to change their lives by coming up with enough money to take a taxi/bus, or if they walk whatever the distance is to get to Les Enfants de Dieu, they are not turned away. This means that overcrowding can be an issue at times, and most of the kids must sleep 2 to a bed. But compared to living on the streets, this is a sacrifice they gladly make.

An essential part of the project is to also help to reintegrate these children back into their families, when possible, or to help support them as they begin their new lives after they’ve completed secondary or vocational school. These are remarkable young men who are now prepared to face their future with hope and with promise. A number of them are taking the entrance exam this week to go into secondary school, and their goal is to continue to be at the top of their class all the way through the university.

Raising the funds to send this many children to primary and secondary school is not cheap. The center’s monthly budget is 3 million Rwandan Francs, which is about $6,000 USD per month. Currently, they receive $2,000 per month that they can count on, so the challenge is to raise the remaining $4,000 per month ($48,000/year) through individual donations.

We saw in these boys an amazing potential for leadership, such determination to succeed, such compassion for those who are lost and vulnerable. These children are indeed the future of Rwanda, so we will pray that enough sponsorship will be found so that no child will be left behind.


From there, we went to spend time at the Rwanda Women Initiative Project founded by William Bahati. William has been our driver for part of the week, so we were very excited to see the work that God has called him to do to bring hope to women who are living with HIV/AIDS or living in dire poverty.

On our first day together, William had shared his story with us of how his wife had died of an apparent heart attack when she was 8 months pregnant with their first child. She was only 20 years old, and they had only been married 2 years. Hearing his story, we were reminded of the urgency of completing the medical clinic in Mumeya that we visited last week. This is exactly what the Mumeya residents were telling us about the need for pre-natal care.

William serves his church by doing pastoral care and visiting people in the hospital, and it is through this ministry that he saw the need to help women who are widowed, many of whom are HIV positive. As a result, he rented a building so that he could provide a place to train widows, women living with HIV/AIDS, and other poor women who have no income at all so they can learn handcraft activities, which will allow them to become self-sustaining. Their goal is to eradicate poverty and to intervene in an anti-aids campaign. Through training, they hope to provide high-quality craft products that can be sold in the marketplace to help earn live-able wages for their clients.

The Rwanda Women Initiative Project is still in the formative stages, so it was pretty cool that God brought William to be our driver so he could see first-hand the work that is being done by others whose ministries began as a dream and a vision to make a difference.