Resilience & Livelihoods

Develop financial and food security in Rwanda’s poorer communities

AEE Rwanda knows from experience that development works best when addressed holistically. Households need to have sustainable incomes to maintain development gains and sufficient reserves to endure shocks and crises, natural and human-caused.

Helping people to support themselves is at the core of AEE Rwanda’s approach. Our programs give disadvantaged youth a chance to acquire the vocational and life skills they need to realise their potential, become valued members of their community, and the parents of tomorrow. Our programs are aimed at households with dependent children and youth aim to establish the income and food security necessary to the wellbeing and flourishing of children.

Savings and self-help groups are the core of AEE's approach to grassroots development. Savings and self-help groups are formed from fifteen to twenty members with a similar social and economic status who live close to each other. Many groups are women-only, with others being men-only and mixed.

Training is provided to the savings and self-help groups on how to save, even on a very limited income, and how to make loans to group members for income generation. Early in a savings or self-help group's life, a small loan may be extended to buy bananas from a farmer to sell at a local market. The loan is repaid and the profit kept by the member taking the loan. As group members' incomes grow, the small business opportunities grow too.

Savings and self-help groups build social capital too, as members regularly meet and cooperate over years fostering community cohesion and mutual support. The groups continue after the project ends and membership of a group is in principle for life. Savings and self-help groups are assisted to form clusters, that can pool their resources for bigger cooperative projects. As the number of groups and clusters grow, cluster form federations. These people's institutions of clusters and federations can advocate to local and district authorities for the member groups and become trusted partners of the local and district governments.

With a network of stable savings and self-help groups, with their associated clusters and federations, further development interventions can be deployed to communities, for example a savings or self-help group can transform into a cooperatively farming producer group, further growing members' incomes.

AEE provides youth with in-demand skills through our Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programs. These programs lead to stable employment in skilled trades that provide an income well above that obtainable through the alternative of unskilled casual labour. TVET programs are also a pathway to university for students with the aptitude and the will.

Our TVET programs also teach youth from disadvantaged and marginalised backgrounds the personal financial management and life skills. Savings groups and small cooperatives formed by youth in TVET programs help meet the members immediate financial needs and through loans and mutual support enable them to set up small businesses in their trades.

AEE provides youth with in-demand skills through our Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programs. These programs lead to stable employment in skilled trades that provide an income well above that obtainable through the alternative of unskilled casual labour. TVET programs are also a pathway to university for students with the aptitude and the will.

Our TVET programs also teach youth from disadvantaged and marginalised backgrounds the personal financial management and life skills. Savings groups and small cooperatives formed by youth in TVET programs help meet the members immediate financial needs and through loans and mutual support enable them to set up small businesses in their trades.

A large number of Rwanda’s poorest are smallholder farmers or agricultural workers – many of whom are women – engaged in subsistence farming or small-scale market activity. AEE programs that train smallholder farmers to select location and climate appropriate crops, teach techniques to make more efficient use of land and inputs, provide initial seed and other inputs to get farmers started, and link them with local, regional, and international markets, sustainably increase crop yields and household incomes.

Global climate change is affecting Rwanda’s agricultural sector through less reliable rains and more frequent extreme weather events. AEE programs promote climate smart agriculture, assisted by technology, to help smallholder farmers to adapt to the changing climate. AEE is encouraging agro-forestry as both an income source and a way to rehabilitate the heavily de-forested Rwandan landscape.