PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

The Personal Development Program is the core program that is closely interconnected with the Education and Parents program. The Program serves the purpose of supporting children to find their way back to school and off the street. Children are supported to regain their faith, self-confidence, passion, and the will to regularly attend school and leave the street behind. The only way for children to successfully follow their pursued path is by regain their inner will.

We want to provide these street children a safe place to develop their attributes of faith, self-confidence, passion, will, and skills that will have a positive impact on their lives.

Our program follows specific steps designed to successfully welcome these children at Root Foundation.

  1. Contact to new children
    From time to tim, we devote our time to spend one day on the street with children. We seek contact and talk to them about their circumstances and desires to find out more about their background. At the end of the day, we invite them to our Saturday Program at Root Foundation.

  2. Open days
    During the open days at Root Foundation, we counsel and train children on important values, present possibilities for future changes, and host several activities.

  3. Visiting children at home
    Subsequently, we visit our children many among whom still have a home to return to, in order to get to know their family and the situation. If the parents are willing to work hand in hand with us, we will consider registering the child at our Foundation.

  4. Registration
    After research about a child´s social situation, we register her or him at Root Foundation. We gather all important information and keep them updated in a database. Now the personal development program can deploy its full potential and help the children to return to a regular life off the street.

In order to encourage and enhance the personal development of our children, we organize a number of activities at our center. These daily activities help children to learn about themselves and to regain their faith, self-confidence, passion, and the will to regularly attend school and leave even the thought of spending time at the street behind.

Weekly Activities

Traditional Dancing and Drumming

One of our children’s favourite activities is the traditional dancing and drumming which takes place two times a week. Even the smallest ones take part in this program and have a lot of fun. Meanwhile the children are pretty good in their action so as to perform in special events like weddings or our Fellowship.

 

Brass Band – advanced

Our Brassroot Project in cooperation with “Brass for Africa”.

Brass Band – advanced

Our Brassroot Project in cooperation with “Brass for Africa”.

Drawing

Many among our children love to express themselves through drawing.

 

Umwali Program

Volunteers are planning and leading a program that is adjusted to the teenage girls’ general and personal problems, requests and concerns. Furthermore, we teach the girls  nowadays should behave, how they should be treated and which rights they do have. Also, the girls are doing a lot of handcrafts such as bracelets or baskets to support the Root Foundation.

 

Ingimbi Program

As an equivalent to the Umwali-Program, also teenage boys are given advice concerning the way how they  might shape their lives. On top of that, they also get the opportunity to discuss about those topics which currently touch them the most or rather about their current situation and feelings.

 

Singing

Music is fascinating most of our children. And singing is the music that comes totally out of themselves! 🙂

 

Belly Dance

Hilde Cannoodt is a professional belly dancer and belly dance teacher who started teaching girls at Root Foundation in autumn 2018. In an interview for our Newsletter, she stated: “I don’t speak Kinyarwanda and most of the girls don’t speak English, but through movement we can find a common language.”

 

Reading

The Reading is a great opportunity to improve the children’s grammar and language skills in Kinyarwanda as well as in English. The children are supported in learning how to write letters, poems and how to speak in front of a crowd self-confidently and in a convincing way.

Besides that, we offer a big choice of books – It is quite astonishing how the children can lose themselves in literature.

 

Traditional Dancing and Drumming

One of our children’s favourite activities is the traditional dancing and drumming which takes place two times a week. Even the smallest ones take part in this program and have a lot of fun. Meanwhile the children are pretty good in their action so as to perform in special events like weddings or our Fellowship.

 

Theater

Through theater lessons, the kids can learn acting and generally how to act self-confident and respectfully in front of few people as well as in front of a crowd. Former plays of the theater group dealt with quite serious topics like the consume of plastic, the disease of HIV and disabilities in Rwandan society.

 

Brass Band – beginners

Our Brassroot Project in cooperation with “Brass for Africa”.

 

Fashion

A platform to gain confidence while presenting favourite outfits.

Brass Band – beginners

Our Brassroot Project in cooperation with “Brass for Africa”.

Football

As many of our Root children have the dream to become a great football player in the national team of Rwanda we offer training lessons to them once a week.

Football is not just a great sport you can use to free your energy, it also teaches teamwork, fair play and discipline. Coach Leon is supporting the children’s process of learning these enumerated values and in improving their sportive skills at the same time.

Modern Dance

Traditional and Belly Dance are not enough? Some of our teenagers prefer freestyle and pop music!

Saturday Program

Saturday is the biggest day at Root Foundation on which most of the children show up. We are teaching them values like honesty, respect, tolerance, cooperativeness.

According to their respective ages, our children are divided in small groups that get merged into bigger groups so discussions, games and experience sharing become a weekly highlight.

Finally, outcomes of different weekly activities come together and the children and youths get a stage where they can perform.