Partnerships

Education Support Project For Youth Refugees is a U.S Embassy State Department funded project through Julia Taft Grant, the project aims to provide education inclusion for the refugee youth in Rwanda and at the same time provide employability skills which allows them to be integrated into the job market for either wage employment or self-employment.

Project Activities

• Culinary Arts Training
• Entrepreneurial skills
• Internship placement in Kigali’s finest hotels
• Job placement

Key Stakeholders

• U.S Embassy (Sponsor)
• Esther’s Aid (Implementer)
• UNHCR (in charge of Refugee in Rwanda, in partnership with them we reached out to the beneficiaries)
• MINEMA (Ministry in Charge of Emergency Management in Rwanda, we are partnering with them as government entity that is in charge of refugee management)

Esther’s Aid is among implementing partners of the 5-year (2016-2021) USAID Huguka Dukore Project that will provide employability skills to 40,000 vulnerable youth across 19 of 30 districts countrywide.

Project Activities

• Work Readiness & Be Your Own Boss tTraining,
• Work Based Learning (WBL)
• Access to finance through formation of Savings and Loans Associations (SILC)
• Post training accompaniment support to enable youth transition into jobs or business start-ups and coaching

     Stakeholders

• USAID
• EDC
• AKAZI KANOZE ACCESS

In 2017 we forged a partnership with CIP Rwanda and were introduced to Orange Fleshed Sweet Potato (OFSP). Through this partnership we were exposed to the great benefits of OFSP and immediately we became an implementation partner, incorporating it into our Culinary Arts program curriculum. This has led to us changing most of our students’ snacks to sweet potato-based products.

We’ve also incorporated OFSP in some of the assortments of baked goods we produce which includes breads, amadazi (fritters), chocolate finger cookies, cupcakes, doughnuts, etc. These are all sold at our Heavenly Bakery, an offshoot of our School of Culinary Arts.

We educate the community on the benefits of OFSP and provide them with recipes. The addition of OFSP into their daily diets has been very transformative health-wise because of it richness in Vitamin A which helps improve resistance to infectious diseases, decreases morbidity and prevents dry eye. We also train them on how to cultivate the crop not only for consumption but also to market it and become self-sustaining entrepreneurs.

The passion to achieve the Sweet Potato for Profit and Health Initiative (SPHI) goal has propelled us to source and plant our own vines for greater production. This can really contribute to food security, which meets the goal of reaching 10 million households by 2020.

We were happy and humbled to be invited by SPHI to showcase our mouth-watering baked goods at its recent 10^th Annual Sweet Potato For Profit And Health Initiative Convention in Kigali, Rwanda.