Emmanuel Kayitare is 20 years old, currently S2 at Musambira Secondary School in the Kamonyi District.

What Emmanuel values in life is to study.  His message to other children like him, “…is to feel easy at their problems even though they are not easy.  I also encourage them to participate in sports.”  Going to school is important to him because he can become an intellectual so that when he is given a job he can do it well or also be self-employed.  Emmanuel’s wish is to become a journalist so that, in his words, “…I may speak for the speechless.”

Emmanuel was visited because he was delayed in primary school.  When asked what made him happy while being in primary school he answered, “You know I am a child from a poor family, and worse again my mother is HIV+. I have suffered from hunger when I was in the primary school because I studied far away from my family, and when I came back from school, I got no food at home. I was always sleepy during afternoons, but I feel happy because at secondary school we get lunch and Foundation Rwanda has given me a bicycle to facilitate the transport.  Take a lunch at school is the program of the government of Rwanda that every student in a secondary school should have lunch at school. This has helped me, the reason why I am studying well, and I appreciate Foundation Rwanda for supporting me.  I eat once here at school and go back home. I eat at home when there is food, and when there is no food, I only eat the next day at school.  My life is in the hands of Foundation Rwanda, the day they will stop paying the school fees for me before finishing my studies I will be obliged to stop, not only for me but also for other students who live miserably like me.”