Kigali, 30 May 2019
President Kagame today met and interacted with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) – Project Rwanda students. The project is a student-led community service initiative that connects CMU students from its Pittsburgh, Qatar and Rwanda campuses with the aim of enhancing the educational experience of Rwandan youth through technology. The project further facilitates the interaction and cross-cultural exchanges between the students.
“You don’t reach full potential unless others around you also benefit. We never sought to have Rwanda, we want the best for ourselves but that is much better if others that we have to relate to, are doing well. That is the whole idea for the partnership with Carnegie Mellon University,” President Kagame told the students.
Since its establishment in 2010, over 140 Rwandan students in 4th and 5th grades have been trained in programming, keyboarding, and creative arts, as well as 20 technology literacy and essential IT skills workshops for teachers. This project’s focus will continue to be on teacher-training.
This is the initiative’s seventh cohort of students to visit Rwanda. The current team visiting Rwanda is comprised of seven students and one staff member from CMU-Pittsburgh as well as seven students from CMU-Qatar, who are facilitated by CMU-Africa students. They are offering two-week training programs in 3 primary schools (E.P. Kacyiru, SOS Village d’Enfant, and IFAK) as well as offering a refresher JAVA course with kLab.