Rwanda’s recent history has been characterized by ethnic tensions, mistrust, and violence. Post-colonial leaders preached sectarianism and extreme hatred, which culminated in the 1994 genocide. Youth were often under-educated or not educated at all, furthermore being denied a public voice and thus easy prey for misuse. They were involved in carrying out atrocities during the 1994 genocide since they were not able to critically reflect on the propaganda of the government. Thus Never Again Rwanda helps youth to build their critical thinking and presentation capacity, soft skills like critical thinking, presenting on topics,team building voicing your own opinion are not taught in Rwandan schools to prevent such an event to happen again.

Never Again Rwanda wants to provide to secondary school students the opportunity to learn and practice these skills soft skills outside the classroom and then bring them back to school with them. This will be done with the method of public speaking. It provides them with the opportunity to learn such necessary life skills, voice their opinion and the chance to be active citizens (agents of change) in today’s Rwanda. This gives a platform to express their opinion being heard by invited guests, such as school principals, district officials, students, local politicians and members of other NGO.

Problem

Never Again Rwanda promotes critical thinking skills for youth through Public Speaking, a new method built on the success of our engagement with debate competitions.

Solution

Never Again Rwanda is trying to instil Critical Thinking Skills with Rwandan Youth to enable them to raise their voice and be active citizens of their country. Public speaking is a method giving them this opportunity. We are the first to bring Public Speaking to a country with rich oral traditions to a youth eager to voice their opinion.

Example

Never Again Rwanda has experience with debate trainings and competitions and supported schools institutionalize it since 2006. In 2011 alone we trained 149 students & teachers from, hosted three debate competitions, each attended by over 300 listeners. We are now building experience with public speaking and expect similar outcomes with schools adopting public speaking into their curriculum because students want to continue practicing this fun method. Both debate and public speaking build on Rwanda's cultural value of rich oral traditions. Thus, this format fits wonderfully into the Rwandan culture. Furthermore, public speaking is not resource intensive for schools to adopt. Therefore, it is the ideal format for Rwandan schools to implement and easily adopt to create empathy and critical thinking skills in Rwandan schools.

Marketplace

A good collaboration with school administration as well as district officials is vital since they must acknowledge the importance of public speaking for schools first. A second challenge is language with French and English strongholds in different regions. To ensure that everybody can express themselves, both languages are encouraged during trainings and competitions. Another barrier might be teachers wanting per diem during trainings, which contradicts our philosophy. To overcome this, the importance of their engagement and what this opportunity hold for their career need to be demonstrated and their engagement during the process be appreciated.