JULY 2024

2025 Sponsor Trip

Muraho, family! We are excited to announce our next mission trip! For sponsors, this is an incredible opportunity to meet your sponsored child in person, visit their home, and spend time with their family. If you are a supporter of the ministry and want to see firsthand how families are being supported and loved through BFR, mark your calendars for April 2025. On our trips, we focus primarily on 4 categories: building relationships, experiencing family, witnessing empowerment, and immersing ourselves in new cultures. It is truly a life-changing experience, and we hope you can join us! To learn more about what all that means, to sign up for the trip, or to join an info session, head to our Visit page.
 

Highlights

With this past quarter bringing the end of the school year, our leaders placed an extra emphasis on education. They organized an Education Week where they visited every school our kiddos attend to observe their behavior and discipline, talk to school leaders, and have one-on-ones with teachers. These education weeks have such a positive impact on students’ motivation and academic performance, and build great relationships with the school leaders. As this school term came to a close, 50 of our kiddos have just finished taking national exams in either 6th grade, 9th grade, or 12th grade. Leading up to the exams, our team worked diligently to ensure they were well-prepared and confident going into testing. We are eagerly awaiting their results! After all of this intense focus on education, it was encouraging to receive a certificate of appreciation from one school where several BFR kids attend. The school thanked us for our participation in the community and for our advocacy for our children. Now, we are officially done with the 2023-2024 school year, and the kids are on break until the new school year starts in September. Many of our kids will become more involved in the daily rhythms of house chores and helping the family day by day, and others might travel to other sectors throughout Rwanda to visit extended family. Please pray for a safe, refreshing break for your kiddo.

As you know, BFR is always looking for ways to support not only the children in our program, but their entire families as well. One of the main ways we do this is through our Beyond Charity economic empowerment program. We’ve begun the next round with 40 caregivers (10 from each location we serve) receiving a small business loan. They are excited to use this loan to continue growing their businesses! Our leadership team has also been developing new tools to better track loan data and provide more intensive guidance to our caregivers in this process. To ensure ongoing physical health, we have initiated a 3x per year food allotment for all families including staples like potatoes, cooking oil, and soap. Lastly, two of our families (who live next door to one another) suffered a devastating house fire. Thankfully, everyone is safe, but they lost all their possessions. We supported them by providing necessary items like clothing and furniture. Please pray for these families as they continue to recover from this traumatic event!

Our activities are designed to cover a wide range of interests that contribute to social interaction, personal development, and memorable experiences. In Gahengeri, we enjoy taking field trips, most recently visited a cow farm where the kids learned about animal care and farm operations. It was a fun and educational experience for them!