A decade after the genocide, kids our own age in the Eastern Province of Rwanda are fighting to overcome challenges that face many kids in Africa: poverty, education and disease. Many children in this area were left without families, homes, or education. To help these youth, we’ve launched “Teens Connecting Continents – Rwanda” in collaboration with Partners in Health.

Our dream has three parts: to enable youth in rural Rwinkwavu to attend schools, to provide health care and education, and to develop a recreation program. The recreation program involves supporting the growth of a youth soccer program, rebuilding the soccer stadium, and creating basketball and volleyball courts. The hope is that this new facility will become a youth center and an empowerment facility for health, and will bring together the community.

During the spring of 2009, we are holding a series of awareness activities to educate people about the need to support and fight for basic human rights in East Africa, such as access to clean water, food, sanitation, education and medicines to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases. Helping to provide these in conjunction with a program that encourages play and a sense of community can make a huge positive difference in the lives of thousands of young lives.

Using proceeds from a raffle and donations, we’ve sent $7,000 to initiate our effort to provide education for youth in this community and help establish the soccer league in Rwinkwavu. In addition, we sent ball point pens, since attendance at school requires each student to have a pen and a school uniform.