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1. Tell us a little about your experience when you first arrived in the US. The plane ride, settling into your dorm etc.
My first 24 hours in the US seemed to me too beautiful to be real. I was finally on the campus I had dreamed of for so long, but somehow I was not really appreciating the moment as I should have. My counselor showed me my room, and all I could think of was “Is this really happening?” But then, on the second day, I finally processed the fact that I was indeed at Yale. It was such an epiphany, the people were amazing and the campus stunning. I was overwhelmed with joy.
2. What has been one of the most pleasant surprises of your experience so far? Any funny or special moments you can share?
The best highlight of my time so far was my birthday on October 5th. Like almost all my Mondays, I had a lot of work for my classes; at midnight October 5th, I was literally immersed in my homework for Italian class. But then, first surprise of the day, Chaste posted a wish on my Facebook wall which literally made my day. And later, in the evening, I came back to my room from a walk with Chaste around campus, and found that my friends had prepared a surprise party. It was one of those moments that are simply perfect.
3. What have been some of the challenges you have faced so far?
The first few weeks were really hard because I did not feel like talking to people. As surprising as it sounds, I felt we would not bond given that I am so much older. I hung out with Chaste all the time. Over time, I realized that it was just an excuse I gave to myself not to face that fear. I decided to change, and made amazing friends since then. Up to now, I still have such moments of doubts, but I learned to cope with it and move on.
4. Tell me about your favorite class and why you like it?
My favorite class so far is Introduction to Music Theory. I was in choir for very long but never actually learned how to read music notes. Every day in class is so much fun. I am also taking the class because I am also interested in DJ-ing and music production. The class is a perfect combination of fun and pursuit of a passion.
5. What do you look forward to as your time in the US and at Yale continues?
My time here made me realize how much I value my relationships with people. I feel like every person on campus is exceptional; the Yale community is simply wonderful. I am really looking forward meeting more and more amazing people and learning about their stories.
This article was written and featured in The New Times Rwanda, a daily national newspaper based in Kigali, Rwanda.
In May 2011, Rosine Ndayishimiye and 10 schoolmates initiated the first ever entrepreneurship club at their school, Lycee de Kigali.
“We wanted it to be a practical tool to the Entrepreneurship course that was by then taught in theory,” she said and added: “With the help of our senior advisor and teacher, Mitesh Patel, we launched the club. Four months later, we started a business of selling fruits—avocadoes and bananas. We started with an initial capital of Rwf28, 000 (approximately $43 USD), and scaled to profits of more than a million a year (approximately $1550). EWe started by doing it ourselves, but as it grew, we employed someone.”
Just before this venture, Ndayishimiye had attended the Babson Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy (BELA), an event she credits for setting her entrepreneurial mindset in motion.“Our school was given an invitation and I was lucky to be one of the six students selected to represent Lycee de Kigali high school in the BELA 2011,” she notes.
Upon return from that week-long entrepreneurship workshop, she and 10 other like-minded students immediately got down to work. “We did a mini market research among students by giving them questionnaires to answer. Our research revealed that students needed healthy and cheap appetizers with which to supplement the school food. We then asked for permission from the school administration, pooled resources and started the business.”
Each member came up with an initial contribution of at least Rwf2, 000 (approximately $3), and together, they managed to raise a total of Rwf 28.000 ($43). “At the beginning, we used to sell between 16-30 avocadoes per day. Now the club sells at least 200 avocadoes. That is profit of Rwf 1 million RWF per month,” she says.
Ndayishimiye notes the venture was (and still is) not just about the money: “Our club also had a social aspect, for instance, we were able to organise an anti-smoking week at the school last year, with the help of the World Health Organization. This was still in line with our vision to help people live a more healthy life, which is why we went into the fruit business in the first place. We also made visits to established businesses like Bralirwa and Bourbon Coffee, just to get mentorship from their staff.”
She notes that the club has since grown from the initial 11 pioneer members to 50. “It’s serving very many people with a bias for entrepreneurship, not just the initial members.”
Thanks to her efforts exhibited through the school entrepreneurship club, Ndayishimiye was selected from more than 1,200 applicants to be one of 23 Bridge2Rwanda Scholars. And through her hard work and perseverance, she has now managed to secure a full scholarship to Babson College in the US, for which she leaves next year.
Ndayishimiye received the good news about her scholarship on December 3, and had this to say: “Today, I got an admission and a full scholarship from Babson College, ranked number one university in the world in Business and Entrepreneurship!”
She went on: “It is an exciting opportunity not only for me but also for my country. I plan to study Entrepreneurship and Environmental Sustainability. At the end of my education at Babson, I want to come back and help my country in helping youth create businesses that are profitable and environmentally friendly.”
After her secondary education at Lycee de Kigali, Ndayishimiye enrolled for the Bridge2Rwanda Scholars Program. Bridge2Rwanda Scholars Program is a gap year program that helps the best-performing Rwandan students win scholarships in top tertiary institutions in the US, Canada and in Europe.
“When I was done with high school, I heard of Bridge2Rwanda applications from the Babson Rwanda Entrepreneurship Center, and I immediately applied since it looked like a great opportunity for me. In March this year, I was privileged to be one of 30 students selected from 1200+ applicants,” she says excitedly.
She has also been active on other fronts: “For two years , I have participated in Rwanda Global Entrepreneurship Week activities as a co-organizer of GEW at Lycee De Kigali and as a trainer. We trained secondary school students in business idea generation and organized rocket pitch competitions. Some of our trainees have already begun the process of starting their own businesses. The whole idea is really to inspire persons from all walks of life to see the hidden potential in entrepreneurship, and also to realize that it is always possible to begin from somewhere, with or without money. In our case, we started our school entrepreneurship club with a net capital of Rwf28, 000.”
After she has attained her degree, she hopes to build on the entrepreneurial foundation already set with the school entrepreneurship club. She reckons that being one’s own boss comes with a host of benefits: “Being self-employed gives one the independence and flexibility in his decision making. Though it might be challenging, it gives one employment and other people too. It is not just one person to benefit, but the whole country; it reduces unemployment and hence other people’s suffering is eliminated or reduced.”
She is acutely aware too of some of the negative sentiments that such a career move is bound to attract, and drawing from her own experience says: “For someone who did science in A-Levels, it is hard to understand how I can settle for Entrepreneurship and business. Some people think that I should study and do medicine. For instance, people, especially students, consider that selling avocadoes is a dirty job that I and my friends should have left. But I believe that there is no dirty job or business as long as it serves people and gives profits.”
Who does she look to for motivation? “Jesus inspires me very much. He undertook His great mission selflessly for the wellbeing of others. I emulate Him by doing all my best for others, not for recognition, but for the fact that they deserve to be treated well. Nelson Mandela, Mitesh Patel, and my parents also are my great role models. Every day that I wake up, I take some time to pray, think about what God has done for me, and plan for the day. I read an article or a book. I prepare myself and then go to school. When I go back home, I greet everyone and ask about how he or she feels; I feel that it is important for me to relate well with my people. I exercise and then have super. I pray with my family, read the Bible and go to sleep.”
Currently, she is also involved in community work with the Christian Youth Organization for Physical and Spiritual Development (CYOPSD), a non-profit organization that helps improve the financial plight of Christian youths and students by furnishing them with entrepreneurial mentorship and business trainings.
Ange graduated first in her high school class, having consistently held the top position in her class throughout Secondary school. When Ange joined the B2R Scholars Program in 2012, her English skills were weaker than most other students because she had been in a rural area, but we immediately recognized a unique spirit and spark about her. She worked extremely hard and became one of the highest scorers in the class on the standardized exams. Consequently, she won a full scholarship to Marist College in New York where she is currently in her Freshman year. Below, Ange shares about some of the challenges she faced growing up in Rwanda and how she overcame those struggles to get to where she is today. Ange has an incredibly giving heart, and she had a great passion to return to Rwanda to help her people. We are proud to be a part of her journey!
My mother’s character has led to my determination and made me the person I am today. In April 1994, it was the time when genocide took place in Rwanda. On the first day of the genocide, April 7th, my father was shot and killed. My mother was pregnant and I was about one year and a half old. My mother and I had to flee to the stadium in the middle of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, where numerous people were gathered. We stayed there until the end of April, when my mother gave birth to my brother. At that time, she couldn’t find enough porridge, or anyone to support her in these hardships, yet she persisted. Many parents were separated from their children during the genocide, but she refused to leave us. For two months, she hid us and searched for food. I was too young to help her, but she did this until the end of the genocide. Her persistence played an important role in our survival, which is a great credit to her.
After the genocide ended, my mother took us to return where we lived before. But when we arrived there, she found that a soldier had appropriated our house. She asked him to leave, and he intimidated her and said that if she continued to insist, he would kill her. Therefore, my mother took a resolution of hiding my brother and me in another place that was far from our neighborhood. After that, she went fearlessly to the soldier’s captain and reported the problem. After seeing the determination my mother had to return, the captain resolved the problem and we returned back to reside in our home. It was due to my mother’s great resolution that we were able to live there again.
My mother was unable to attend high school, but she values education so much. She always pushed my brother and me to study, which taught us the value of education. She made it possible for us to do well at school, even if there were many hardships in our lives. We didn’t have electricity at home and we had much domestic work to do, but she borrowed a room with electricity from a neighbor so that I could study comfortably. Her motivation gave me a strong reason to work hard. We had no valuable resources and not enough land for an inheritance. But her daily and precious advice allowed me to study as hard as I could, so as to build my own inheritance. She also inspired me along the way, by how she joined a school that taught women how to make traditional jewelry. Her willingness to study, regardless of her age at that time, encouraged me to study diligently as well. Thereafter, I became eager and committed on my studies in order to achieve a better future, which is my dream. At home, my first responsibility was to study, but I had other household duties after school such as cleaning the house, fetching water and washing dishes. I managed to perform well in class and later won a scholarship to attend secondary school.
At high school, I had to alternate my classes with activities like the students’ commission, the Anti-AIDS club and others. The key to succeeding in this was respect, and my mother taught me this habit. For my mother, respect was a great thing to value. As a woman with little education, she kept in mind that for someone to be respected, she has to respect herself first. She used to tell me that respect does not come from what one has but from who she is. She was always occupied making jewelry, respected everyone and she didn’t waste her time going to the bar, as an uncommitted person would do. My mother taught me to respect myself. As a result, I tried to be exemplary at school, especially when I was in secondary. Being one of the student representatives, I respected myself and others by fulfilling my responsibilities and being punctual, as she taught me. The one tool that guided me through was the persistence I adopted from my mother.
The key to success in everything that I am involved in is the persistence, respect and determination that my mother taught me. Now that I am no longer a kid, I see that I bear fruits that my mother sowed in me since I was a child and this is the foundation of who I am and what I do. What I learned from her improved my credibility and success in life. The fact that I like to learn and do research is the result of her influence. As a Bridge2Rwanda Scholar, I have worked hard to get into a top University in the US. I respect what I do and who I am, and I respect others and their beliefs. I intend to apply all I have learned from my mother, and to share what she taught me to help bring positive changes to my community. She is more than a mother to me. She is my hero.
Danny Biz, B2R scholar and student at Gordon College, told his inspiring personal story during chapel last week.
Danny was 4 years old during the 1994 genocide. He was separated from his parents for three years, believing they were dead, before being reunited when he was 7. To further his education, Danny taught himself how to speak English and use computers before someone recommended him to the B2R Scholars program.
Watch the video below to hear the rest of Danny’s incredible story!
Cadet Jackson Karama, sophomore at the US Coast Guard Academy, catches a foul ball this summer at his first major league baseball game cheering on the Red Sox. But that is not even the amazing part of the story. Click here to read the rest of Jackson’s heartwarming foul ball story.
By the time I was five, I realized that life was not simple. At that point in my young life, I was in a refugee camp in my home country, Rwanda. I was born in 1990 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then called Zaire). My father, a Rwandan refugee who had left his country as part of the diaspora, was already married and had seven children when he took a second wife. Toward the end of 1990, the second wife gave birth to me. I was given the name Ndekezi and later the second name Richard.
When I was a year old, my parents divorced and as is the custom in this part of Africa, this meant I had to be raised by a stepmother on my father’s side. A few years later, war broke out in the DRC and the first victims were the Rwandans living there. In neighboring Rwanda, the genocide against Tutsis had just been stopped, but many of the perpetrators who carried out the genocide had fled to the DRC and any Tutsi were their main target. We had no choice but to leave Congo and return home, although to one I had never seen. What I found there at first, however, nearly ended my life.
We went to a refugee camp in Gisenyi called Nkamira. Although no camp is enjoyable, ours was deadly. Water was scarce and finding food was a struggle that only the fittest could risk. We lived on empty stomachs for days. Sanitation was another big problem, and people in the camp were dying of cholera and other diseases. I can remember many children I used to play with who disappeared from my life. Even more frightening was the fact that the leaders of the genocide and those who had allied with them were still killing people whenever they got a chance. Life in the camp was so risky, sometimes parents left behind their own children. Thank God, my stepmother was too kind to abandon me after my father died in 1998. I often ask myself how I survived, but I believe God saved me so that I could work to improve others’ lives in Rwanda and beyond.
In 1998, when security was restored in Rwanda, we left the camp. In 2001, I joined the Sonrise School and orphanage founded by Bishop John Rucyahana as a home for Rwandan orphans and other poor children. At Sonrise, my hope was restored. I came to see life beyond the scars of my past. The past was no longer a threat to my life and neither was it the sole determinant of my future. All I had experienced shaped my life. As a maize seed first decays in order to grow and yield a harvest, so we had endured suffering in order to become the people we were meant to be.
I have realized that the mirror through which we visualize our lives should change from the influence of our past to a focus on the present as we work to prepare for tomorrow. I have gone through the fire of adversity, and in the process gained an ambitious character with the aim to change the lives of others through my zeal for engineering and social entrepreneurship. Currently, I am working with some friends on development projects that target children who face difficulties in succeeding at school. We are working to create a community organization, Engage Rwanda, to promote education for children in rural areas by helping them to learn English better and sooner. I now see all the difficulties I have faced as opportunities through which I should always learn. The background of a person is not the only determinant of his future. However hard an experience we have, we can still shape our lives for the better.
By Tom Allen, Country Director
My turbulent adolescence occurred in the late 60s, with my figurative (and very briefly, actual) residence being the Haight / Ashbury District, the epicenter of the hippie culture. Then and there we insisted that all “businessmen” (not yet “business people” nor “entrepreneurs”) were bloodsucking ticks and leeches upon what might otherwise be our perfect society,… the villains who ate other people’s babies. But with time and experiences have come new insights and conclusions.
In the last few months, I have really come to understand God’s love through his people. This is just another experience that reminded me of God’s plan for my life. I had always lived with my unhealthy spleen. I visited doctors who said it was due to tropical malaria and that the problem would disappear with time. One night in July, when I was alone in my small room that I rented with my brother, it caught up with me and I did not know what to do. I felt more pain than I had ever felt before. My brother was at school and I did not know who to cry to. I endured the pain for the rest of the night until the following morning when I could no longer stand it. I scanned through my brain, then through the contact names in my phone book for someone to call, and my instinct fell on someone I had not even thought about. I hit the button and Anna’s voice was on the other side.
The Bridge2Rwanda people were already doing so much and giving them more of my personal burdens seemed unacceptable to me. Having no other choice, I told Anna (the Director of the Bridge2Rwanda Scholars Program) about the whole situation, and something I did not expect happened. It was around 6:00 am in the morning, but she left her house and came to pick me so she could take me to the emergency room. She came on the directions of a motorcyclist until she reached my place. At that time, I could not be able to express how I felt inside. At the hospital, she stayed with me for most of the day and we were later joined by Mary Claire, our English teacher. Later that evening I was discharged with an appointment to meet a specialist doctor the following day. The following day, Anna and I met the doctor and he said I needed to undergo a bone marrow check up, a painful test, which would help to find out the root cause of my splenomegaly.
Two weeks later, there we were, in the doctor’s office again. He spilled the news that struck my nerves out of my body. He diagnosed me with a blood disorder called Myeloproliferative Disorder, which is in the same family of disorders as leukemia. He explained a lot about the disorder I had tested positive with, and how some people lived long lives with it, but the only word that stayed at the back of my mind was “cancer.” A flashback of my aunt who died of breast cancer a few years ago hit my memories. It was terrible. I knew I was going to follow the same path. While all this went through my minds, I looked at Anna and thought about everything she was sacrificing to stay by my side. I could not take this for granted, so I acted strong and managed to fake a smile. She turned, looked at me and asked me, “How do you feel about all this, Eric?” So much was happening in my mind at this time that I could not actually figure out how I felt. I was confused and did not know what to say. I wrestled with emotions and finally said in a calm voice that I was okay with whatever happened. On the contrary, I actually felt crashed and defeated. How was I going to achieve all I had ever dreamed of? We left the hospital and Anna helped me find the drugs the doctor had prescribed. I then went straight home not knowing what to do next.
That night I tried to sleep but could not. I was lost deep in thought, and decided to read a book. The first book my hand landed on from the pile I had was, “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” which contains a lot of short personal stories. I opened the page whose headline was, “Did the Earth Move For You?” This was a story about Angela, an eleven-year-old girl who was stricken with a debilitating disease involving her nervous system. She was unable to walk and the doctors did not hold out much hope of her ever recovering from the illness. There, lying in her hospital bed, she vowed to anyone who would listen that she was going to move again someday. She worked hard lying there faithfully visualizing herself moving. One day, as she was straining with all her might to imagine her legs moving again, it seemed as though a miracle happened: The bed moved. It began to move around the room! She screamed out, “Look what I’m doing! Look! I can do it! I moved!” Of course, at this moment everyone else in the hospital was screaming too, and running for cover. Equipment was falling and glass was breaking. You see, it was the San Francisco earthquake. But don’t tell that to Angela. She was convinced that she did it. After a few years later, she was back to school on her own two legs.
This story changed my mood so drastically that I was back at peace with everything around me. I knew that anyone who can shake the earth between San Francisco and Oakland could conquer a disease, can’t they?
All this happened when Richard, our college counselor, was in the USA. He also did everything possible to make sure that I was on the right medication. A few weeks later he came back to Rwanda. When I met him he pulled something from his bag, and said, “I bought this for you when you were not feeling well.” I was so baffled that I couldn’t even say “Thank you.” It was just a t-shirt, but I felt so special. The people I have known for these months have become so close, we are family.
Two months later, when Anna and I went back to the doctor for a checkup, the improvement he found would normally have taken a year. My blood count levels were back to a normal level and my spleen had reduced to half the size it was before. No one was happier for the great news than Anna, who sat in the same chair she was sitting in when I faked a smile a few months earlier. This time I genuinely grinned at her. I was so surprised at knowing that even Dale Dawson, the founder of Bridge2Rwanda, knew about my situation and that he was praying for me. I have come to identify myself as part of the big B2R family, and not just a Scholar. I can never give enough back!