Specialist Assignments > Case Study - Dr Kate Seager

Dr Kate Seager travelled to Rwanda to advise on VSO's education programme;

I was invited to work as a short term volunteer to carry out a review of VSO Rwanda’s success in meeting the aims of its 2005-06 planned education programme and to advise changes or goals for the following year. The review needed to include the educational aspects of its disability, gender, HIV and AIDS and advocacy programmes. I centred my evaluation on the extent to which programmes fulfilled VSO’s main aims of reducing poverty and increasing equal advantage and met the goals of the Rwandan country plan.

They were busy but very pleasant three weeks. A great joy were two 2-day site visits to check out interim conclusions from reading many files filled with employer and employee written evaluations. I visited a small sample of schools in the rural northern and southern regions, meeting headteachers, pupils and volunteers. Despite bumpy roads, I enjoyed the journeys where much scenery is attractive and often dramatic in volcanic or lakeside settings. It raised my awareness of pupils’ home life in areas of subsistence farming to observe people working the land or in tea and coffee plantations using hand tools.

VSO currently recruits only secondary teachers in Rwanda. The same difficulties that I had experienced in my own previous 6-week placement as an education adviser were evident: lack of specialist teachers, especially of science and mathematics, many large classes, and a desperate shortage of resources and specialist facilities. Many schools have no science laboratory. The state recognises this situation and state examinations include a practical examination for schools which have laboratories and questions where students are told what the outcomes of an experiment were and pupils have to write what they would have done if they had had a laboratory. All secondary schools out of Kigali, the capital, are boarding schools. Headteachers have to manage on very tight budgets. While I was there they received the equivalent of 31 pence a day per pupil. This has to provide 3 meals a day, as well as pay for cleaning and ancillary staff and learning resources. Several schools have many orphans of the genocide or AIDS who need additional support.

The evaluation highlighted a few goals which were not reached due to the government’s complete reorganisation of all Provinces which hindered or delayed progress. Such setbacks are inevitable in a country striving to move forward under difficult conditions. There were many real successes, however.

VSO provided volunteer teachers in 17 Rwandan secondary schools last year. They enriched the learning of over 3200 pupils and provided 77 Rwandan English teachers and 58 science teachers with additional professional training. One previously peripatetic teacher of the deaf is helping the only school for the deaf to develop sign language. Several volunteers additionally provided personal, financial and professional support to many pupils and schools, for example two taught an orphan to read and fed him twice a week.

All volunteers in Rwanda contribute to the VSO education programme on raising awareness of HIV and AIDS. This was highly successful last year. VSO trainers integrated HIV prevention projects into 65 secondary schools, trained 69 teachers and 109 secondary students as peer trainers and provided them with good training materials. Trainers took the materials into communities. The training changed attitudes and reduced the stigma of living with AIDS by providing increased factual knowledge and understanding to community groups, street children and several who are HIV positive. A community worker reported two significant changes in his area. People living with HIV who had been shunned and abandoned by the community are now helped and included in some gatherings and clubs. Additionally, in January 2006, 90% of the pregnant women in this community came for testing and 50% of those were accompanied by their husband.

These are just a sample of the successes brought about by volunteering. Moreover, it is enjoyable and rewarding.